


Taking Chances

by Realmer06



Series: Pieces Universe [28]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), pieces universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Realmer06/pseuds/Realmer06
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Scorpius Malfoy and Rose Weasley got married, Al Potter could no longer avoid meeting Honoria Ridgeton. And now, he can't get her out of his head. But if this IS love, as so many are insisting it is, can two such different people really make it work? Or are they crazy to even try?</p><p>Pieces Universe, companion to the Roses Trilogy</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Yes, can you believe it? Chapter One of the LONG awaited tale of Al Potter and Honoria Ridgeton! For the uninitiated, this is a companion piece to my Roses Trilogy (Among Thorns, Fighting Briars, Tending Roses), and it will make a lot more sense if you have read at least Tending Roses first.
> 
> Thanks as ever to Maggie for the beta-work. I hope it's worth the wait! I'm going to get the other chapters up as soon as I can, but real life is busy and full of many projects requiring my attention, so I'm not going to commit to a specific time frame. I AM working on it, though, I promise!
> 
> Without further ado, please enjoy!

_Taking Chances, Chapter One_

Al Potter successfully avoided meeting Honoria Ridgeton for a very long time. He had a very good reason for this: he didn't like her. When she was a year old, she'd been betrothed to his best friend Scorpius, and seventeen years later, Scorpius had lied about it, so naturally, Al disliked Honoria. It was all very complicated.

They met at a wedding. They actually met briefly at a wedding before that wedding (both were Scorpius's, but the first one didn't take), but as they didn't do anything more than glimpse each other for the first time, that meeting didn't really count.

So they met at a wedding. It was Scorpius's second wedding, the wedding he actually went through with, to Rose Weasley. And honestly, in the scheme of things, that interaction should have had not much more impact than their first – they had a brief conversation, then shared a dance, spending no more than eight minutes in each other's company, and they spoke mostly of Scorpius. They should have parted ways and forgotten the encounter altogether.

Spoilers: They didn't.

Sometimes the events that alter the direction of your life are huge and monumental and obvious. And sometimes, you have a brief conversation with a stranger, and you have no idea that you will wake in the morning a different person than you were the day before.

Falling in love caught Al off guard. The fact that he fell in love with his best friend's ex-fiance after a single conversation didn't help that in the slightest.

Al had decided a long time ago that love and dating wasn't really something he had time for. Scorpius used to ask him (when he got tired of Al meddling in _his_ love life) when he was going to find a girl to focus on for himself, and Al's response was always the same: when he could find someone more interested in dating Al Potter than Harry Potter's son, and when he could find someone who didn't mind that all his free time was spent in the infirmary studying Healing. "And given that I'm pretty sure the girl I just described is mythological, I'm content to focus on no girls at all."

As he got older, of course, St. Mungo's replaced the Hogwarts's Infirmary in his answer, but the principle of the statement remained the same: dating and love simply took more time and energy and focus than Al had to give, and Al had never found anyone who tempted him to reconsider that.

And then he met Honoria.

At first, he didn't realize exactly what was happening. He thought he was picturing her just before he went to sleep the night of the wedding because she was a piece of the puzzle that had been unexpected, replaying the conversation they'd had at the reception simply because it had been so odd. But then, over the course of the next week, he found himself daydreaming about her. _Daydreaming_! Al Potter, who was defined by a single-minded-ness that was scary, especially when it came to his work, daydreaming about some random girl he barely knew when he was supposed to be brewing Healing potions and making rounds and treating patients! It was disgraceful, and it was beneath him.

But he couldn't stop. She had taken over his thoughts, his dreams, his every waking moment. It was really incredibly rude, and incredibly inconvenient, but his mind went straight to her given half an opportunity. He replayed their conversation over and over in his mind, fantasized about how it felt to hold her in his arms, tortured himself remembering the gleam in her bright blue eyes and the smile constantly lurking at the corners of her mouth. And when she'd talked about love? The faraway look that had come into her eyes, the conviction in her voice like that was the only real thing they'd spoken of . . .

"Al?"

With a start, Al tore his attention away from the bewitching Honoria who had apparently taken up residence in his subconscious. Will Greer, his fellow Healer-in-Training, was trying to get his attention.

"Sorry," Al said. "What did you need?"

"Our shift ended five minutes ago," Will said with a grin and a laugh. "And you've been staring at that shelf for ten."

"Oh," Al said, blinking "Have I?"

"Yeah, mate," Will said, clapping Al on the shoulder. "C'mon. Time to go."

They made their way down to the locker rooms, Al barely noticing the end-of-shift joking and jostling happening along the way. "You know," Will said conversationally as they gathered their personal items, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were lovestruck."

It took Al half a second too long to laugh, but Will didn't seem to notice. "Lovestruck?" Al repeated. "Me?"

Will shrugged with a grin. "Stranger things have happened, right?"

For a moment, Al considered telling him everything. He almost opened his mouth and asked, _What if I was?_

He didn't, though. Will Greer was a good guy. Friendly. Amiable. And for all Al knew, he would be perfectly able to offer romantic advice. But though Al knew Will, worked with him, chatted with him from time to time, they weren't _close_.

No, if Al was going to get advice about this, it needed to be from someone who really knew him, who knew his romantic history without having to be told, and who had a romantic history of his own. Someone who had spent most of his life thinking one way about love, but had been forced unexpectedly to see it in a new light.

He _wanted_ to say he needed Scorpius, but Scorpius was on his honeymoon, and besides, this was about Honoria, the woman Scorpius had almost married. Al couldn't get advice from Scorpius. He'd have to go somewhere else.

He Apparated to his brother's flat and knocked on the door before he could talk himself out of this particular act of insanity.

When James Potter opened the door and saw Al standing on the landing, looking hesitant but determined, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Little brother," he said cheerfully, bracing his weight with his fingertips against the top of the doorframe and leaning out over the threshold. "To what do I owe this unexpected honor?"

Al took a deep breath. "I need your help," he said, and James's face broke into a slow, delighted grin, his eyes twinkling. " _Don't_ make me regret coming here," Al warned immediately. The smile never left James's face.

"Of course not," he said. "Come in, come in." And he led the way into his flat.

James Potter's flat did not look the way much of the world might have expected it to. James had signed on with the Wigtown Wanderers fresh out of Hogwarts and had taken the Quidditch world by storm. But despite being a famous Quidditch star, he lived simply. His flat was small, cozy and welcoming, and looked no different than any flat belonging to any bloke in his late twenties, save for the matching furniture and dishware. He poured Al a drink, and they sat on a leather couch.

"So, little bro," James said, stretching and propping his feet up on the coffee table. "What can I help you with?"

Al sighed and stared into his glass, working up the courage to speak, trying to figure out how to phrase his question in a way that would result in the smallest possible amount of brotherly ridicule. Finally, he looked up. "How did you know Sylvie was the one?"

Sylvie Watford was James's fiancé, a Seeker from a rival Quidditch team, the Kenmare Kestrels. Two years ago, James had stunned everyone by settling down into a long-term, committed relationship, despite years of protestations that he would never be caught in that trap. Five months ago, he'd proposed, and they were getting married in December, much to the dismay of James's female fans.

The question threw James for only a moment, then his eyes lit up in delight. "Is this about a girl?" he demanded gleefully, sitting up. "Is my little brother really here asking me for advice about a _girl_?"

"Yeah, okay," Al said, deciding then and there that this had been a bad idea. He set his drink on the table and stood. "See ya, James."

"No, no, no, no," James said, standing and heading Al off, stifling his laughter as best he could. "I'm sorry. Sit down. I want to help, I do." Al locked eyes with his brother and held him in a steely gaze for a moment or two, trying to determine whether or not he was serious. And James did sober, and even looked a little chagrined for laughing in the first place. "Seriously," he said after a moment. "I'm sorry, Al. I shouldn't have laughed. Sit back down, please?"

"Okay," Al said with a nod, heading back for the sofa. When they were seated again, James invited him with a gesture to continue. "You always said," he started carefully, "when we were in school, and even after, you always said that you would never settle down with anyone. You said that no woman would ever be worth it. And here you are getting married. So I guess I just want to know . . . what happened?"

"Well," James said, nodding, "first of all, it's easy to be an expert on something when you know nothing about it. And back then, I knew nothing about love, okay, Al? I was just running my mouth. And I thought, how on earth could anyone ever be satisfied with one person? I couldn't think of anything more boring then spending the rest of your life with one person, the _same_ person, day after day after day. But then . . ." He trailed off, and his eyes went soft and he smiled with a faraway look that Al had never really seen on his brother before. "Then I met Sylvie," he finished. "And she changed everything. I can't explain it, Al, I really can't, but . . ." He laughed a little, shaking his head, and Al couldn't help but smile.

"There was always something there," James went on. "On the pitch. Something electric. But it wasn't until I spent a day with her _off_ the pitch . . . I was a goner. Suddenly, I couldn't imagine a life, a future, that _didn't_ have her in it, day after day after day, and I honestly can't understand how I ever thought this could be boring. I know it's not the most helpful answer, but I just knew."

Al nodded, lost in thought. He just knew, he'd said. And he'd said there was something _electric_ between them. He couldn't help but think of Honoria, of the dance they'd shared, the way the air between them had lit up and the rest of the dancers on the floor had seemed to disappear. He remembered the way he'd lost himself in those bright blue eyes, not even minding that she constantly seemed to be laughing at him, like she'd figured out something he had yet to learn. Sitting on a couch in his brother's apartment, Al's breath caught in his throat in echo of that night, that last moment when her eyes had caught his at the end of the dance and _something_ had passed between them. She'd sounded breathless as she'd bid him goodnight. He could still hear her words.

 _Well, Al Potter. I . . . I'm glad I came tonight. I . . . I won't soon forget it_.

She'd kissed him on the cheek, and before he could collect his thoughts enough to say anything, she'd disappeared. He could still feel her lips, warm and soft against his skin.

"Al?"

With a start, Al jerked back to the present. James was watching him with . . . Merlin, was that _sympathy_ in his eyes? What was his world coming to? Al closed his eyes and rubbed his hands over his face.

"I have a problem," he said.

"Talk to me."

So Al did. He told his brother everything that had happened the night of Scorpius's wedding and everything that had happened in the days since. He described Honoria in all her bewitching beauty, and how she'd turned his life upside down in the space of eight minutes and one meeting.

And James, to his credit, didn't laugh once, or even look like he wanted to. He actually listened, treating the situation with all the weight it merited. Al was tempted to wonder who this man was and what he'd done with his brother, but, well . . . if he hadn't seen this side of James before from time to time, he wouldn't have come here in the first place.

"Well, Al, it sounds like you're a victim of love at first sight," James said when he had finished, and Al reacted violently against that statement.

"No!" he said forcefully, standing and pacing behind the couch.

"Why not?" James asked, entirely serious, turning to follow Al's progress around the room.

"Because that isn't real! Love at first sight? It doesn't exist. I – I _firmly_ believe that."

"First sight, maybe not," James conceded. "But first conversation? First encounter? Al, that happens. Sometimes, you _do_ just know!"

Al shook his head forcefully. "No," he said, still clinging to his flat-out dismissal of the very idea. "It's . . . infatuation. Fixation. But love? No."

"Why not?" James challenged again, standing as well. "All love grows out of something. Why not this?"

"Because!" The word exploded out of him, and Al couldn't remember the last time something had him _this_ worked up. "I don't know her! And she doesn't know me, and you can't fall in love with someone you don't know!"

"But the story starts _somewhere_ , Al," James insisted. "On a train platform when you're eleven, or on a Quidditch pitch when you're twenty. Or at a wedding, when you're almost twenty-two."

Al was still shaking his head, but the gesture felt less like a dismissal and more like a denial the longer it went on. "No," he said again, trying to make the word sound final. "I just, I just have to push past this. If I ignore it, the feelings will go away."

"How's that working for you so far?" Al turned to glare at his brother, but James was unfazed. "Will the feelings go away if you ignore them long enough? Probably, yes. But you can't run away from everything, Al! What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not – I'm not afraid of anything!" Al insisted, but the words sounded weak even to him. "It doesn't just happen like this!" he said then, voice desperate. "Not to people like me."

Finally, something won a laugh out of James. "People like you?" James repeated. "What, you mean Ravenclaws? People guided by reason and logic?"

"That's not what I meant," Al said quietly, trying to hide his blush.

"Of course it is," James countered with another good-natured laugh. "But here's the thing, Al. If you're waiting for love to make sense before you commit to it? You're gonna be alone for the rest of your life. If that's what you want, then fine. But if there was any part of you, however small, standing at the side of that dance floor, watching Rose and Scorpius and wanting what they found? Then it's time to take a leap, little brother." He was in front of Al by then, and had him gently by the shoulders. "For once in your life, take a risk. Act without having the next twelve steps planned out. Lead with your heart instead of your head and see what happens. Find this girl. Tell her how you feel. See if she's been affected by it, too. What's the worst that could happen? If it all goes to shit, you have my permission to come back here and say 'I told you so.'"

Al closed his eyes, warring with himself and everything that James was telling him to do. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, "I'll think about it."

James gave a short laugh and shook his head, dropping his hands from Al's shoulder and running one through his hair. "Of course you will."

"Hey," Al said wryly. "Agreeing to think about not thinking is a pretty big concession for me."

"Yeah, I know," James said with a grin. "As long as you really will think about it."

"I will," Al promised. "I should go, though. I'm sure Sylvie's on her way over."

"You should stay and have dinner with us," James said then. Al shook his head.

"I'm not great company right now. Rain check?"

James looked like he wanted to say something, but in the end all he said was, "Sure." Then he stopped Al at the door. "Al? That was a great speech you gave at Scorpius's wedding. I hope I can count on you to give just as good a one at mine."

Al froze, staring at his brother. "What?" James gave him a genuine smile.

"You heard me," was all he said.

"I'm not your best man," Al said. "Fred is."

"Fred is a lot of things," James said. "He is my best friend, and I love him, and I trust him with my life. But he's not my brother. You are."

For a long moment, Al didn't know what to say. Eventually, he settled on, "Thank you."

"Get outta here," James said with a smile and a wave of his hand.

Al Apparated back home. He'd promised James he'd think about not thinking, and he did, sitting at the desk in his flat, composing letter after letter to Honoria Ridgeton. Every one of them ended up crumpled into a ball and thrown on the floor. What could he even say? _Hi there, it's Al Potter, who you have no reason to remember. There's a possibility that I've fallen in love with you, and my only hope is that you feel the same, because otherwise this letter is uncomfortably awkward at best and downright creepy at worst_? Yeah. That would go over real well.

Eventually, he gave it up, going to bed in a fit of frustration, doomed to another night of dreams of sweet-smelling hair and laughing eyes and the ghost of lips on his own that would only fuel his distraction at work the next day. Something had to give, and it had to give soon, because he couldn't keep on like this much longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as ever to Maggie for the beta-work. I hope it's worth the wait! I'm going to get the other chapters up as soon as I can, but real life is busy and full of many projects requiring my attention, so I'm not going to commit to a specific time frame. I AM working on it, though, I promise!
> 
> Without further ado, please enjoy!

Honoria Ridgeton had a problem and his name was Al Potter. He had plagued her for years, which was particularly infuriating given that she had only officially met him seven days ago.

For most of her life, Honoria had been engaged to Scorpius Malfoy, who had been best friends with Al Potter since the age of eleven. The more time Honoria spent with Scorpius, the more she heard about Al, and the more obvious it had become that Al Potter wanted nothing to do with her.

"Let me guess," she'd said more than once in the two years leading up to her planned Bonding ceremony with Scorpius. "Al can't make it?"

This phrase was usually uttered when Scorpius met her somewhere in London for drinks or dinner or some sort of outing alone when he was supposed to meet her with his mysterious best friend in tow. The question was nearly always greeted with a sheepish look and some excuse like, "He's just swamped at work right now," or "A family obligation came up," or "He came down with a sudden headache."

When Scorpius had used that last one, Honoria had laughed with a dry humor. "Like a Victorian lady at bedtime?" she'd quipped, to the telltale reddening of Scorpius's ears. "If he doesn't want to meet me, he can just say so," she'd said then, trying to act as though she didn't care one way or the other — which wasn't even close to being true. Al Potter hadn't even _met_ her! What reason could he possibly have for so steadfastly avoiding an introduction? If she was going to marry Scorpius, which she'd committed to doing and fully intended to follow through on, she wanted to at least be on speaking terms with his best friend.

Her comment had finally earned something close to truth from Scorpius. "It's . . . a complicated situation," he'd said quietly, and Honoria had spent quite a bit of time honestly wondering if Al Potter might not be in love with Scorpius himself. After all, he and Scorpius were obviously close, and Scorpius had never mentioned a girlfriend in connection with Al . . . But if that were true and Scorpius were aware of it (as he obviously was), would he be so comfortable with the complicated situation? She had no idea, and Scorpius made it pretty clear that it wasn't a subject he was interested in discussing. Honoria did her best to respect that.

 _It's also possible he's just one of those guys who doesn't want his friendship to change with the insertion of a committed partner,_ she eventually reasoned. _Either way, his dislike of me clearly has very little to do with me personally – how could it? So it really doesn't matter in the slightest._

She'd tried to move forward and not let Al Potter bother her, but that had been easier said than done. And that had all been before she'd even set eyes on him. It was slightly irksome to her that, like many of the females of her generation, she had an inescapable fixation with Albus Potter. But at least, she tried to reason, hers had nothing to do with his father. No, it was the man himself driving her insane. That he was Harry Potter's son was, in her case, purely incidental.

And then she'd realized she couldn't marry Scorpius, conspired with him to call off their wedding, and learned that there was a girl he'd been in love with for years but hadn't allowed himself to be with because of the promises he'd made Honoria. And when she'd learned that the girl in question was Rose Weasley, cousin to one Al Potter, well. A lot had suddenly made sense.

"You might have told me that Al didn't want to meet me because he thought I had usurped his cousin's rightful place at your side," she'd scolded Scorpius at lunch with the happy couple the day after their engagement had been announced. Scorpius had rewarded her with that sheepish look again. Rose had rolled her eyes.

"Are you trying to tell me that Al honestly refused to meet Honoria for three years?" she'd demanded of her fiancé. "Merlin, he would, that stubborn arse." The words had been spoken with a certain amount of affection.

"That loyal to you?" Honoria had asked her.

"That irritatingly old-fashionedly romantic," Rose had corrected. "Honestly, as practical-minded as he is about everything else, my cousin is remarkably . . . I don't even know what to call it."

"Stubborn about clinging to the childlike belief that true love should be fought and held out for above all else?" Scorpius had supplied, and Rose had nodded at once.

"Yes. That. Excellently put."

"I've had a while to compose the wording."

Honoria had nodded and tried to laugh in exasperation at Al with them, but the truth was, what they had said had resonated with her in a very real way. Wasn't that, after all, why she had called off the wedding in the first place? _I want love,_ she'd told Scorpius. _I want to lose my head and do crazy things, all in the name of some guy I know I can't live without. I want to find the person I'm supposed to be with._

So Al Potter's position? It made perfect sense to her.

Rose and Scorpius had been married a week ago. They'd invited Honoria, but quietly. Honoria had gone, keeping to the back of the chapel, sticking to the edges of the crowd at the reception, but as Scorpius and Rose had shared their first dance as husband and wife, she had seen Al Potter standing by himself at the edge of the dance floor, and she hadn't been able to resist. She'd been trying to meet this man since she was seventeen years old, and she hadn't known if she'd ever get another chance. So she'd gone up and started talking.

A week later, she still couldn't quite believe the way she'd spoken to him. She must have sounded insane. She'd tried to be mysterious and alluring, tried to keep him off guard the way he had with her for years, albeit unintentionally. But she was the one walking away off balance. She'd just wanted to leave an impression, but somehow, he'd had gotten caught firmly under _her_ skin, and she'd left the party after sharing a single dance with him because otherwise . . . well, she wasn't sure _what_ she might have done.

A week later, she was still fixating on Al Potter. She just kept thinking about their conversation at the wedding, the things she had said to him, what she had told him she wanted.

_I want, so badly, to experience the craziness of love. To lose my mind and my reason and my senses. To speak once with a young man, and have him possess my thoughts and my daydreams for days afterward._

Her face went red and hot as soon as she remembered the way he'd looked at her that night, like she was a puzzle or a mystery, like he wanted nothing more than to make sense of her. And oh, the way her dreaming and daydreaming mind filled in the blanks about how _that_ might happen . . .

"Honoria?"

She jumped at the sound of her name, her quill splattering ink across her data sheet. Cursing, she pulled out her wand and siphoned the ink off the page. "Sorry," she said at once. Her friend and coworker Saoirse slid in across from her at the worktable.

"Honey, where was your head?" Saoirse said, sounding a bit concerned. "You were looking at that data sheet, but you were a million miles away, and that's not the first time this week. I've covered for you three or four times with Stephen."

"Saoirse, I'm sorry, I didn't—"

Saoirse waved away her apology. "'Noria, I don't care, you know I don't," she said with a laugh. "God, how many times have you covered for me? I'm just worried about you." She reached over and laid a hand over Honoria's. "I saw that Scorpius Malfoy got married this past weekend. Are you okay?"

Being heartbroken over her former betrothed's marriage was so far from the problem Honoria was dealing with that it took her a moment to wrap her mind around what Saoirse was suggesting.

"What? No. I mean –" She shook her head, trying to clear it. "This isn't about that."

"Because I know how hard it can be watching an ex move on," Saoirse continued. Honoria just shook her head.

"Scorpius and I were never romantic," Honoria reminded her."It was arranged, and I'm the one who called it off." Saoirse shrugged like that didn't matter.

"It doesn't mean you can't be upset about it. I'm the one who broke up with Deirdre, but I still felt like punching a wall the first time I saw her out with someone else."

"No," Honoria said with another shake of her head. "Scorpius is not who I'm pining after."

She hadn't intended to reveal that much; it had just slipped out. But Saoirse knew romantic intrigue when she heard it, and her whole body visibly perked up. Honoria buried her face in her hands. "Shit," she said, and Saoirse clapped her hands together and grinned.

"Come on. You and I are getting a drink. Like, right now. Don't even try to get out of it."

Saoirse was a force of nature Honoria had long ago learned not to try and fight. Their shift was more or less over, so Honoria allowed herself to be packed up and Apparated away to The Leaky Cauldron to talk about romance over shots of Firewhisky.

"You have to find him," was Saoirse's immediate response when Honoria had finished the whole saga. Honoria blinked.

"What?"

"Yeah," Saoirse said, nodding with great enthusiasm, completely caught up. "Oh, 'Noria, you _have_ to find him! This is exactly what you wanted, _exactly_ what you told him you were waiting for! You have to find him, and you have to tell him how you feel, and I know you're about to tell me that's crazy," she said loudly, speaking over (and correctly identifying) Honoria's attempted interruption, "but that's exactly _why_. You have to do it _because_ it's crazy!"

Saoirse's words sparked a fire in her that Honoria tried desperately to ignore. She shook her head emphatically, at a loss for words. "I — I _can't_."

"Why not?"

"Because! I —" She faltered, trying to find a good reason. "I don't even know how I'd find him."

Saoirse's eyes lit up in victory the moment Honoria said it, and she knew exactly why, couldn't deny the damning evidence herself. Because that wasn't something you said if you weren't going to do a thing. That was something you said when doing the thing was inevitable.

"You can ask Scorpius," she said to that, and before the words were out of her mouth, Honoria said, firm and unyielding, "I'm _not_ asking Scorpius." Saoirse smirked.

"Okay. Then, do you know where he works?"

With great regret, Honoria answered in the affirmative. "St. Mungo's," she mumbled. "He's an intern there." Saoirse's eyes lit up even more, and she leaned across the table.

"Is he working tonight?"

"I don't know his schedule, Seersh, I'm not a stalker!" Honoria protested violently. Saoirse just smirked.

"Go to Mungo's," she said, voice low and intense. "Say you're sick and you _have_ to see Healer Al Potter."

"And in this sexual schoolgirl fantasy of yours, what exactly am I supposed to do when he shows up in the exam room?" Honoria asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm. Saoirse just gave her a highly suggestive look, and Honoria shoved her from across the table. Saoirse laughed.

"Tell him how you feel," she answered. "If he doesn't feel the same way, you leave and you never have to see him again." Honoria's focus turned inward as she sat, still and silent, considering all angles of the situation within her mind. "Look," Saoirse said then. "Here's the bottom line as I see it. Do you want to see him again?"

Honoria didn't hesitate, but quietly answered, "Yes."

"Then go see him again." She said that like it was that simple, that obvious a solution, and Honoria wanted to argue that it wasn't that simple, but she knew in her heart that it was. This was what she wanted. She had expressed this desire to Scorpius, to her parents, to Al himself, and here it was, in front of her, the mad, impulsive gesture carried out in the name of love, the emotion that overwhelmed her, had been overwhelming her for a full week now.

She'd once told Scorpius that she was, at heart, a selfish person, someone who went after her own desires and happiness before anything else. She'd been seventeen when she'd said it, young and idealistic, and the words were no longer true in the way they had been when she'd said them. She still wanted that which would make her happy, but she also wanted that to be something which would make the people she cared about happy as well. She would not have called off the Bonding if Scorpius hadn't wanted it, too. She would not pursue a _something_ with Al Potter unless he made it likewise clear that it was also his desire.

"I have to find him," she said. Saoirse grinned.

"Yeah, you do," she said. "Go get him!"

Before she could second-guess herself again, Honoria stood, drained the last of her drink, and marched out of the pub, purposeful and direct.

She Apparated to St. Mungo's without hesitation, and when she made her way up to the Medi-Witch at the check-in desk, her story came out easily. "Hi," she said, "there's no real rush on this, I know you are probably very busy, but recently I've been suffering some dizzy spells and periods of distraction that are very unusual for me. I had one just as work was ending, and I don't feel safe Apparating home without it being looked into. Better safe than sorry, right?"

She was directed to an exam room on the second floor and told that someone would be in with her shortly. Seated on the raised table, hearing the click of her chart full of false symptoms as it slid into its slot on the door, she kept her thoughts focused firmly on Al. She had to. If she didn't, the enormity, the utter foolishness of what she was doing here would catch up with her and she would walk straight out before she had a chance to talk to anyone.

It wasn't until a young blond Healer-in-Training walked through the door that Honoria realized what she'd forgotten to do.

 _Stupid,_ stupid _lovesick girl!_ she berated herself. _If you're faking an illness in order to see a specific Healer, you might, at some point, want to_ ask _for that specific Healer, you imbecilic—_

"Well, Miss Ridgeton," the Healer-in-Training said in a friendly voice, referencing her chart, "I hear you're having some trouble with dizziness?"

"Yes, off and on for a week now," Honoria said, thinking fast. "Actually, I know that, uh, Al Potter is a Healer in Training here, and he was actually present when I had the first attack, so . . ."

She trailed off at the look on the Healer's face. His smile had frozen in an almost beleaguered way, and Honoria cursed herself again for her lack of foresight as the Healer-in-Training said, "Well, Healer Potter isn't working the second level today, but I assure you that all the Healers available are well trained to meet your needs."

 _Salvage, salvage, salvage_ , she thought frantically, trying not to let her franticness show on her face. She gave her best sheepish but winning smile.

"Oh, gosh," she said, aiming for disarming. "I know what I must sound like. I bet you get that all the time, right? Young women coming in, claiming illness, looking for Al Potter?" She did not mention that technically, she _was_ one of those women. "But listen, Healer Greer," she said after a quick glance at his name-tag. "I'm asking after Healer Potter only because he was there when my symptoms started, at a wedding a week ago."

She was tempted to say more, to argue that she really did know Al, and if he'd just go and get him, he'd see. But she was also aware that the more she said, the more she would sound like one of those girls who probably, yes, did come in here all the time. So she forced herself to stop talking, to keep smiling, to meet his suspicious gaze and not look away.

After a long moment, his eyes dropped to her chart. He cleared his throat, saying, "Excuse me for one moment, would you, Miss Ridgeton?"

When the door clicked shut behind him, Honoria slumped forward, heart pounding in her ears. What the hell was she even doing here? Now that she had lost the momentum fueled by pep talks and alcohol and love-induced insanity, it occurred to her that there were probably about eight million better ways to get the attention of one Al Potter than lying about medical symptoms and hoping that fate would send him, out of all the Healers in the hospital, to her exam room. It was official – she had gone insane.

She was still in her Ministry uniform – why hadn't she Conjured an envelope of some kind and posed as a messenger with a top secret missive that she'd been charged to put into only Al Potter's hands? He was the son of the Head Auror – she was pretty sure no one would have questioned it.

Or she could have posed as a visitor – she knew the names of plenty of long-term patients here. She could easily have said that she was visiting on behalf of her department and some exploratory research they'd uncovered or conducted, and then waited to be admitted, skulked through the halls until she heard his name, followed the speakers until she knew where he was, then casually waited for him to pass by so she could pull out the "Oh! Fancy meeting you here!" — No, on second thought, that scenario made her out to be much more of a stalker than the situation she currently found herself in.

Ugh, was it too late to just slip out and disappear and try to pretend like this had never happened? As long as she never got sick or had to come back here and risk seeing Healer Greer again, she might survive the mortification.

She pulled out her wand and cast a Hearing Extension charm to ascertain whether or not the corridor was clear, but damn it, she was having the worst possible luck today (or the best?) because Healer Greer was now clearly audible coming back down the hall, with another set of footsteps in addition to his own.

". . . a little different from your usual groupies, is all. This one claims to know you."

"Don't they usually claim to know me?"

Her heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice, which was just irritating. Shit. Her plan had worked. He was _right there_.

"Yeah, but this one was more specific than most. She said you treated her symptoms at a wedding this weekend, and I know you were _at_ a wedding this weekend—"

"The whole wizarding world knows I was at a wedding this weekend, and I didn't treat anyone for anything. But it's fine. I haven't personally dealt with any of my groupies for a while, so I'm due. What's the girl's name?"

"Uh . . . Ridgeton. Honori–"

" _What_?" Al broke in, his tone completely different. "Honoria?" And with barely any warning, the door to her exam room burst open, and his eyes were on her, and it was suddenly a bit difficult to breathe. "Are you all right? What's wrong? Where's her chart?" That last was directed over his shoulder, to Healer Greer, who handed over the grey clipboard, looking sheepish.

"You do know her then," he said to Al. Then his gaze shot up to Honoria. "Sorry for doubting you, miss," he said to her. "It's just, you hit it on the head, we get a lot of girls who—"

"Apology noted, thanks, Will," Al said then, shutting the door on his coworker and turning back to Honoria. "Dizziness and distraction?" he asked, reading off her chart. "You didn't seem to be having any problems when we talked at the wedding, but you did leave abruptly. If you weren't feeling well, you should have said something. I could have —"

"Al," she interrupted, because she had to, because his sudden presence was a bit overwhelming, his hand against her forehead testing for fever, his eyes boring into hers, looking for symptoms of vertigo they wouldn't find. "I'm fine."

The words had the desired (undesired?) effect; he took a step back, frowning at her. "Symptoms like these aren't ones to dismiss lightly. You should have come in before now." And he reached for her face again, and she didn't want to think about what she might do to him if he touched her like that a second time, so she stopped him with one hand.

"Al," she said again, trying to sound firm and not breathless. "Al, truly, I'm all right. I'm not sick." He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

"If you're not sick, then what are you—"

"I had to see you."

It came out in a rush, and he reacted immediately, freezing, almost on guard, and Honoria had to work to hold back her irritation with herself for being so abrupt. What happened to the mysterious, alluring girl of a week ago? She took a deep breath and started again.

"I have been getting distracted at work, every day this week. And the dizziness . . . well, it's not dizziness so much as feeling like my feet have been knocked out from under me. But I know exactly what both of those things are stemming from, Al Potter, and it's you. I can't get you out of my head. For a week now, _all_ I can think about is _you_. And I'm here right now because —" She made the mistake of looking up into his bright, intense green eyes, and she faltered, losing her breath. "Because I had to take a leap. I had to see you. I had to know if this is all me, or if there's even the slightest chance that it's you, too. Merlin and Circe."

She dropped her face briefly into her hands, trying to compose herself. After a deep breath, she raised her face again.

"This is the maddest thing I've ever done," she assured him then. "Absolutely the maddest. And when I told you a week ago that I wanted to be overwhelmed by love, I didn't expect it to happen so quickly, and I didn't expect it to happen with you, but on the off chance that it's not just me —"

She made the mistake of looking him in the eyes again. He was staring at her like he was only just beginning to process everything she was saying, and she was struck suddenly with the terrifying notion that there was a chance that when he _could_ speak, it would be to tell her that all this _was_ just her. That thought took her breath away more surely than his eyes did.

"Anyway," she said in another rush, standing and conjuring a card of parchment and a quill. "I'm not asking you to say anything at the moment," she told him while scribbling her address on the card before she could second-guess this decision. "In fact, I'd prefer if you didn't. I know that seems to run counter to this whole declaration, but the truth is, if you're going to tell me it's just me, then I'd rather not hear you say it. And since there's a 50% chance that that would be your response if I let you talk — "

Her eyes dropped down to the card in her hands as she brushed it against her fingertips. Finally, she held it out to him. "This is my address. When you're off work, when you're able to, if it's not just me . . . come find me? If you don't . . . that will be answer enough. I'll never bother you again, we can pretend it never happened. But if you feel this too . . . if you're willing to take a leap with me . . ." She trailed off, meeting his eyes one last time. He was still staring at her, frozen in place.

He made no move to take the card from her hands, so she crossed to him and slipped it into the pocket of his lab coat. Her fingers lingered on the pocket for the briefest moment, then she looked back up at him. "I'm hoping to see you soon," she said in a whisper, and then she left, slipped from the exam room and left the hospital and didn't stop until she had Apparated back to her flat. Sagging, weak-kneed, against the closed door, she slid to the floor of her entry hall and tried to wrap her head around what she'd just done.

It was almost dusk, and she hadn't eaten, but she was too keyed up to eat, too keyed up to anything other than pace the length of the flat, chewing on her lip and weighing the odds of Al Potter wanting anything to do with the mad ex-fiancé of his best friend who had randomly showed up in his exam room today, raving about being in love with him after meeting him once.

But she meant what she'd said, and if he didn't show up tonight, she'd have her answer. And she'd leave him alone. She would. It's not like they were people whose paths would often cross. And if they did in the past, she'd be pleasant and polite and cordial and never speak of this, and eventually, this infatuation would disappear. She'd return to rationality. She could pretend this had never happed. She could.

When the knock came, at half past eleven, she almost didn't answer the door. She almost believed she'd imagined the sound of the knock, willed it into being somehow, and that if she opened the door, it would just confirm that she had gone round the bend. But when she made no response, the knock came again, and then she was at the door in a heartbeat and had opened it before she had a chance to consider the action.

And there was Al Potter, hand raised to knock, hair tousled, eyes worried and hesitant, but he was _there_ , and he was _looking_ at her like that, and all she wanted to do was launch herself at him, but she forced herself to hold back, to wait, to hear what he had to say.

He was silent for a heartbeat or two, just looking at her, and then he said, "It's not just you."

"Oh, thank _God_ ," she said, throwing herself across the threshold and into his waiting arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued...
> 
> Please consider leaving a review


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait! But I was busy getting married and working on my self-publishing project and packing to move, so I hope you'll excuse it! Apologies in advance for the slight cliffhanger at the end...
> 
> Enjoy!

Being with Honoria Ridgeton was like nothing Al had ever experienced before. She was amazing - smart, funny, passionate, beautiful . . . every time he saw her, every time she came to his flat after work or he went to hers, he had to take a moment to remember how to breathe, so swept up was he in the reality that  _this_  was happening, that she had chosen to be with him, that she felt the same things he did.

"Is this normal?" he asked James two weeks in. James laughed.

"You're living the dream, little brother," he said. "Enjoy it!"

"It just, it doesn't seem sustainable. Living with this kind of . . ." He searched helplessly for the words. ". . . breathless passion every day. Isn't it going to exhaust itself eventually? How do you-" He was cut off by a sharp smack to the back of his head, and he gave his brother the glare of the long-suffering.

"You were thinking too much again," James said with a shrug, unapologetic. Just then, Sylvie came up behind him and smacked  _him_  on the back of the head. "Hey!"

She offered him the same unapologetic shrug he'd just given Al. "You were talking like an idiot again," she said, sliding onto the couch next to him.

Al smirked. He liked Sylvie. She'd insisted that these little brotherly get-togethers become a regular occurrence, and though they were only in their third week, Al was enjoying them more than he'd thought he would ever enjoy spending time with his brother. Clearly, Sylvie was a master magician.

"No, Al, breathless passion isn't sustainable," she told him then. "But if you're lucky, over time, it'll change into something different but equally amazing. Familiarity breeds-"

"Contempt?" James offered with a smirk. Sylvie smacked him lightly on the arm, never losing her focus on Al or her smile.

"A quieter kind of love," she finished. "No less meaningful, no less passionate, but less . . . frantic. And if you're with the right woman," she said then, eyes sparkling, "she'll still find a way to knock you off your feet at the end of the day everyone once in a while."

"You can knock me off my feet anytime," James said, snaking his arms around her. She eyed him coyly.

"Honey, I was talking about the bedroom, not the Quidditch pitch."

It was Al's turn to laugh out loud. James sighed and leaned back against the arm of the sofa.

"Yeah, all right, fine," he said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Why did I introduce the two of you again?"

The conversation moved on to other things, but Al's mind stayed on what Sylvie had said. A quieter kind of love . . . to be honest, he was almost anxious for that to happen. Frantic was a good word for his relationship at the moment. Not that he was complaining, by any means. But he didn't know how much longer he could feel this full without self-imploding.

"So are you taking her anywhere this weekend?" James asked, interrupting his train of thought. "Like, perhaps, a Quidditch game I'm 112% certain I can get you tickets for?"

"Thanks but no thanks, James. The first time I take her out in public isn't going to be to one of your Quidditch matches."

He regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of his mouth. James frowned at him, and Al could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

"Wait," he said while Al tried not to grimace. He'd learned a long time ago with James that it was better not to give away the game if you could help it. "You haven't taken her out yet? What the hell have you been doing for two weeks? Or - mmm, some sordid details there, maybe?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Al chucked a throw pillow at him just as Sylvie gave his arm another smack.

"Well, remember, please, that half my nights are spent pulling graveyard shifts at Mungo's. But when we have a night off in common, she comes to my place, I cook for her, we listen to the wireless or I dazzle her with my Muggle technology and we watch a movie," he said, trying to control his blush.

"I - wow. Just wow, Al. That's - really incredibly sad, actually. Please tell me you're at least getting a  _little_  action in the midst of all that insani-ow!" He glared at Sylvie, who had just delivered yet another light blow to the back of his head, but she was looking at Al, not her fiance.

"Why, Al?" she asked gently. Al sighed.

"The second we step out together, we're probably going to get our picture taken. I look so much like Dad, the tabloids are always snapping photos of me, hoping it's him, and then they run her picture with the back of my head and the headline  _Potter's New Woman? Ginny Weasley in Tears!_ Mum and Dad and I are used to handling it, but Honoria's not, and while I know she can take care of herself, there's always that one kook who will believe it and send her a curse in the mail."

"Which is why the Quidditch match is perfect!" James broke in. "No one is going to mistake you for Dad from the bushes outside a restaurant if you're at the match as yourself."

"Brilliant, James, and then they have to answer questions about how they met and is it love and when's the wedding, and no two-week-old relationship needs that pressure! No, Al, I completely understand. I just hope she does, too."

Al was glad Sylvie had spoken up. It meant he could keep the real reason secret from James for a little longer. But he couldn't keep it from Honoria any longer.

"So," she asked that night, curled up next to him on his sofa. "Is this week going to be more of the Al's Flat Tour? Not that I don't love your flat, but I'm starting to feel like you're hiding me." It was said like a joke, but Al could hear the very real question in the words.

"I'm not hiding you," he assured her.

"Because I can take a couple photographers. No one in their right mind is going to believe that your dad would ever go out with another woman, and I can handle some tabloid story. I can even handle the whole world hounding me as Al Potter's girlfriend. I don't mind."

A thrill went through him at those words -  _Al Potter's girlfriend_  - and he smiled at her. "I never thought you did," he told her, "and I know you can handle anything. But a story in the newspaper isn't how I want certain people to find out about us."

"Certain people meaning . . . Scorpius?" He looked at her, sharp, and she rolled her eyes affectionately. "Come on, Al, I'm not dense. You want to tell him yourself, and he's on his honeymoon, so you can't. I understand completely."

Relief washed over him. "You do?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. "He's your best friend. He should hear it from you." Then she linked her arms into his and snuggled into his side. "I am happy to hole up with you, away from the world, until Scorpius and Rose are back from their honeymoon."

He extracted his arm from her grasp so he could wrap it around her shoulders. Pulling her close, he kissed the top of her hair. "Thank you," he said softly.

If only things had been that simple.

Rose and Scorpius returned from their honeymoon at the end of the week, and Scorpius became the world's most difficult man to pin down. It was understandable - he was a highly talented Auror, he'd missed three weeks of work, and there was some looming threat that Al only knew about because he knew that look on his father's face. But Al knew Scorpius would be swamped when he got back. He just hadn't expected him to be cancel-four-separate-lunch-plans-in-a-week-and-a-half levels of swamped.

"Al, I'm  _so_  sorry," Scorpius said the fourth time he had to put Al off. "I can't believe I have to cancel on you again, I just, I'm getting, like, ten minutes to scarf down lunch at 3:30 every afternoon, and I'm so beat when I get off at the end of the day-"

"Scorpius, it's fine," Al interrupted over the mirror, even though the longer this announcement got put off, the more time his stomach was spending down near his feet. "I know you have a ton to catch up on."

"Yeah, but I want to catch up with you, too," he said with obvious regret. Through the tiny window of the mirror, Al watched him run a hand through his hair. "Is there anything huge? Any massive, earth-shattering developments in your life since I went away?"

He said it like a joke, but it was the opening Al had been waiting for. Still, he hesitated. He wanted to do this in person. The thought of saying to Scorpius  _Hey, so, I actually went and fell in love with your ex-fiance. That's not weird, right?_  was utterly terrifying, and while it was tempting to blurt it out over the mirror when Al  _knew_  Scorpius wouldn't have time to actually talk about it, that wasn't fair to anyone.

He decided on a middle ground -  _There is something huge, but I want you to have the time and focus for it, so it can wait_  - but before he could even start the sentence, a harried looking witch stuck her head into Scorpius's station.

"Scorpius? Shearson's escalating, we need you on site."

"Understood," Scorpius said over his shoulder, then turned back to the mirror. "I'm sorry, Al, I -"

"Go," Al said.

"Sunday," Scorpius promised fervently even as he stood and gathered his belongings. "Come hell, high water, or resurrected Dark wizard, I swear!"

And then the mirror cleared, showing Al only his own, worried face. He  _hated_  that another day was going by before he could tell Scorpius the truth - another  _three_ days, actually - and worse, he knew Honoria was not going to be pleased. He had  _promised_  her he would tell Scorpius by the end of today. She'd made plans for them to go out, and now he had to tell her that it was a no-go.

He was growing accustomed to the face of her frustration. The changes were subtle, but her mouth got a little smaller, the skin around her lips a little whiter, her eyes a little darker. It was his least favorite look, both because he hated seeing her upset and because it meant an argument was coming.

He knew he was in for it when she opened the door to her flat in a nice dress with a grin on her face. But she took one look at him, and immediately changed. Her lips tightened, her jaw set, and the excited light disappeared from her eyes. "You didn't tell him. Again," she said, voice hard.

"He cancelled lunch," Al offered by way of explanation, but he didn't need her reaction to know that line is wearing thin.

"Again?"

The question was very clearly a challenge, and Al knew, he  _knew_  what it sounded like. "Yes, again," he said, trying to sound patient and not defensive. Honoria didn't respond immediately to that, she just turned and walked away, leaving him standing in the open doorway while she picked up quill and paper at her desk and bent over a note.

"What is this, the fourth time?" she asked.

"Our schedules are so different and hectic, I'm surprised we've even found four times to-"

"He's been back for a week and a half."

Al closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I know," he told her.

"You know," she repeated in a dangerous voice. "Do you  _also_  know that we have been dating almost a month and the most of your life I've seen is the inside of your flat? And vice versa? The girls at work think I'm making you up. And honestly, I can't blame them, Al. While he was on his honeymoon, I understood, but he's  _not_  anymore. He's back. And I am  _tired_  of feeling like I'm being kept a secret!"

"I'm not keeping you a secret," Al tried to argue, but she cut him off.

"Aren't you? Because he's been back for a week and half. And four cancelled lunch plans, well, it's just gotten to the point where-"

She cut off abruptly, turning to her owl on his perch and attaching her strips of parchment to his leg. She spoke to the owl in a voice that didn't carry to Al, then opening the window, letting him fly off.

"What was -" Al started to ask.

"Cancelling our reservations tonight," she said shortly. "Since apparently we aren't going out."

Al watched as she shut the window and left the room without another word. A moment later, he heard the door to her bedroom being shut with no small amount of force. Immediately, he grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and resisted the urge to scream.

He  _hated_  this. He hated how frustrated she was and how she shut down instead of talking about it. He didn't know what she had stopped herself from saying before sending her owl out, and asking wouldn't help. He'd tried the last time Scorpius had cancelled. But she wouldn't  _talk_  to him about it, and if he tried to bring it up, she'd just say, "It doesn't matter, let's not let it ruin the night."

But it  _did_  ruin the night, and he knew if he stayed, tonight would be more of the same - frosty and tense. And honestly, he wasn't in the mood. He knew how frustrated she was, but he was frustrated too. Frustrated with Scorpius even though he knew that wasn't fair, frustrated with himself for not pushing the issue with Scorpius, and frustrated with Honoria for not understanding why it was so important for him to do this in person  _and_  for not giving him any sort of chance to explain.

So rather than sit in stony silence for the evening, Al made a different decision. Before Honoria could reemerge from the bedroom, he took quill and parchment and wrote her a note.

_Rather than sit in the same room and be angry at each other all night, I am removing myself from the situation. Dinner is your favorite take out that I picked up on my way over. The Wireless is carrying the concert tonight. I know it's not the same as being there, but at least you won't miss it. Or take my ticket and take one of your friends. It is neither my intention nor my desire that you become a hermit on my account. I hope you can enjoy the evening in a way I know you wouldn't if I stayed._

_I love you,_

_Al_

He left the note and the food on her kitchen counter and Apparated away.

Al knew he might be pouring fuel on the fire, just leaving like that, but he honestly couldn't see how the evening would end any better if he stayed. So instead, he went back to his flat, collapsed on his couch, and wondered what happened to the romantic, passionate simplicity of the first two weeks.

He gave himself twenty minutes to mope and feel frustrated about his situation, and then he forced himself to stand up and do something about it. He hadn't been entirely truthful before, when he'd told himself he didn't know what she'd stopped herself from saying. He  _didn't_  know, but he could guess. He could fill in the end of  _It's gotten to the point where_ \- any number of different ways, none of them great. And - maybe she was right, on some level, he acknowledged with a sigh. Maybe he  _was_  using Scorpius's busyness as an excuse to avoid a conversation he knew was going to be awkward and unpleasant. It was still important that he do this face-to-face, not over the mirrors or in a letter, but he knew he could be trying harder to make time to meet with Scorpius.

And so, with that in mind, he pulled his mirror out of his work bag and called for Scorpius. There was no answer. So, determined to settle this tonight if possible, he called Rose.

"Al!" she said with a smile, setting the mirror up on her vanity, if the view of the room behind her was any indication. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Is there any chance I'm catching your husband at home?" Al asked, and Rose's face fell, lined with regret.

"No," she said, the word an apology. "He's been so busy with work,  _I've_  hardly seen him." Al frowned.

"He's still at work?" he asked. "It's after nine!"

"And he'll probably be there at eleven still, and get up to go in at six," Rose told him, her brow wrinkled with concern. "How much has your dad told you about this Shearson guy?"

Al gave her a look. "Remember who we're talking about," he said. " _My_ dad. He hasn't told me anything. I know something big is happening, but that's more because I can read context clues. What do  _you_  know?"

"Not much. This guy, Tyler Shearson, is a Muggleborn wizard who is combining magic with Muggle terrorism techniques. He keeps sending threats in to the Aurors, for bombs he claims to have infused with magic and set in high level, high traffic areas. The force is spread to the breaking point trying to track them all and keep everyone from knowing that the threat exists."

"Has anything-"

"Nothing's been legit so far," Rose said, anticipating his question. "But they're still sending people after every threat because-"

"Because the second they assume a threat  _isn't_  legit, that'll be the one that's real."

Rose nodded, looking grim. "Exactly. He's even started signing his notes "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," which pretty much  _promises_  that sooner or later, one of these threats will be real. And the biggest fear is, it's going to be for something he  _hasn't_  called in, so they're trying to cover that possibility, too. As well as get ahead of him and bring him in and eliminate the threat that way, but he's proved evasive."

"Merlin," Al muttered, rubbing at his eyes. "Well, that makes my issues seem rather insignificant."

"Yeah, why  _did_  you call?" Roses asked then, her general concern becoming more specific and now directed at him. "If you're trying to get to Scorpius through me, it must be pretty urgent. Is everything okay?"

Al pressed his lips together and debated his answer. "Not urgent," he finally said. "I do need to talk to him, but it can wait until he has time." Rose didn't look like she quite believed him, but thankfully, she let it pass.

They chatted for a little while longer, then said goodnight, leaving Al alone again to wonder how the hell he was supposed to navigate this. He had to talk to Honoria, he decided. Whether she wanted to have the conversation or not, he needed to sit her down and explain his reasons and hope she understood. He'd give her a day to cool off, and then he'd get everything out in the open.

But when she next contacted him, it was by mirror, and she didn't give him the chance to say much.

"I'm having dinner with some friends from work Saturday night," she said briskly when he answered. "They want to meet you, will you come?" Al hesitated, and his hesitation sparked a hard anger in Honoria's eyes. "It's a group of people, Al," she pushed then, voice harsh. "We will not be singled out as a couple for phantom photographers waiting in bushes. Will you come?"

"Yes," he said immediately, trying to placate her. "Yes, I'll come. What time should I pick you up?"

She looked at him for a second, then snorted. "Meet me there," she said. "If we arrive together, it'll be too suspicious, won't it?" Before he could respond to the jab, the mirror went blank. Alone in his flat, Al heaved a frustrated sigh. So much for clearing the air.

And now he'd agreed to go out. He felt like he owed her that - he  _did_  owe her that, and, well, Scorpius had  _promised_  him Sunday. The chances that someone who knew both the two of them  _and_  Honoria would see Al and Honoria out on Saturday night, peg the outing as a date, and mention it to Scorpius before he and Al met for lunch on Sunday afternoon were, admittedly, quite small.

Honoria sent him the time and place by owl. He arrived at the restaurant several minutes early. He was hoping to catch Honoria and talk to her before her friends arrived. He wanted so badly to clear the air. The tension of the past few days had been unbearable. He hated feeling like she didn't trust him. He just wanted to explain, and he wished she would let him. He beat her to the restaurant, though, so he settled into a chair in the lobby to wait and tried to calm his nerves. He was filling inexplicably anxious about tonight, and there was no reason for it.

"Al?" Startled out of his thoughts, he looked up at the sound of his name - to see Scorpius and Rose coming through the restaurant entrance. Immediately, he stood, heart pounding.  _Stop that_ , he thought, distracted, and tried not to look as nervous and guilty as he felt.

"Scorpius," he said, and returned Scorpius's embrace with what he hoped was his usual exuberance. "What are you doing here?" he asked, holding his friend at arm's length, and then to erase the slight accusation from the question, "I thought you were chained to your desk."

Scorpius laughed a little, but he sounded and looked tired. "This one made them release me for the evening," he said.

"Being the daughter of the co-Head Auror has its perks," Rose said with a smile. "As does the argument that an old friend asked us to have dinner and it sounded important, so we really should try to make time."

"An old friend?" Al repeated, flexing his hands down by his sides because, strangely, he couldn't seem to feel them anymore.

"Yeah, Honoria actually set this up," Scorpius said. "Apparently, she's started seeing someone, and he's been a little shy about meeting us, for some reason, so she's forcing his hand a little." He immediately pulled a face and put his hands up. "I know you don't like her, so that probably doesn't sound great, but I'm sure it's innocent and harmless."

He could  _hear_  his heartbeat in his ears. He had to get in front of this. How soon until Honoria walked through the door?

"Scorpius, can I talk to you?" he asked, speaking over the end of Scorpius's last sentence. Scorpius immediately looked concerned and laid a steadying hand on Al's arm.

"You okay?" he asked, his frown pronounced.

"Yeah," Al said, distracted, swallowing hard, "I just, I  _really_  need to talk to you, in private. Can we go outside?"

"Yeah, of course," Scorpius said, turning with Al for the doorway. Unfortunately, there was someone standing in it.

"Oh, good," Honoria said with a winning smile and a blazing hardness in her eyes as she came up to them and linked her arm in Al's. "You're all here."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thank you all for your patience. I know I make you wait a long time for the pieces and parts of this story, and you're amazing for putting up with it. That being said, I have signed this story up for the Write That Fic big bang, so I SWEAR, this will be finished and posted in its entirety by the end of the week. Scouts honor.

For the briefest moment after linking her arm with Al’s, Honoria second guessed her scheme. Al was pale and stiff beside her, and he wouldn’t make eye contact with any of them, focusing instead on a spot near the ceiling. In her heart of hearts, she knew it was a little bit cruel, springing the meeting on him like this, but really, what other choice had he left her? She reminded herself of the last two weeks of frustration, of his broken promise about telling Scorpius before the concert, of the litany of excuses he’d made. The one time she’d let him talk about it, more than  _ a week ago  _ now, he’d said he wanted to tell Scorpius in person, and that was why he was putting it off. After that, and after another “cancelled” lunch had gone by, she’d stopped letting the conversation start, because she just didn’t want to hear it. At any point in the past two weeks, he could have picked up his mirror or a pen, which would have served him just as well. He hadn’t. He was hiding behind his excuses now because he couldn’t scrape up the necessary courage to have the conversation with Scorpius, and she was tired of it. He’d made Scorpius’s feelings on this matter more important than hers, end of story. 

 

She reminded herself of all that, and her resolve hardened. She shifted her focus from Al to Rose and Scorpius, keeping her winning smile firmly on her face. Rose was watching Al with the corners of her mouth turned down and a frown creased between her eyebrows. Scorpius, though, was giving her much more of the reaction that she’d hoped for. 

 

After a pause or two of silence, Scorpius gave a breath of shocked laughter, his eyebrows up near his hairline. “Al,” he said, looking back and forth between the two of them for a moment before settling on Honoria. “ _ Al _ is the guy you’ve been seeing? The one who was supposedly shy about meeting us?”

 

“The very same,” Honoria said. 

 

“But Al  _ hates _ you,” Scorpius said, looking delighted.

 

“Mmm, that’s not the impression  _ I’ve _ gotten over the last four weeks,” Honoria said coyly, and Scorpius laughed again.

 

“Four  _ weeks _ ?” he repeated. “This has been going on for a  _ month _ ? Why am I just hearing about it  _ now _ ?”   
  


“I really couldn’t say,” Honoria informed him coolly, choosing to ignore the tightening of Al’s arm under her touch, which she could only assume indicated he had clenched his fists in discomfort. “You’d have to ask Al that question.”

 

Scorpius shifted his attention to Al, a smirk on his face. “Well?” he asked his friend expectantly. “You want to, uh, shed some light on the situation, Al?”

 

Al still refused to look at Scorpius or his cousin, but he did turn his gaze sharply on her. “Can I talk to you?” he asked in a voice that was quiet and hard, as tension-filled as every inch of his body. She could practically feel the fury radiating off of him, but she refused to be cowed. She met his gaze and shrugged her agreement with the tiniest possible movement. He pressed a hand firmly against her back and steered her away toward the entrance before he let his anger out, but quietly, to avoid causing a scene. “What the  _ hell _ \--” he hissed at her, but she didn’t let him get far.

 

“If it were up to you, I’d have been stuck in your flat until Christmas. I decided I didn’t want to wait that long,” she informed him, her voice level and unyielding.

 

“You had  _ no _ right---” He broke off, breathing hard through his nose to maintain his control. “I was having lunch with him  _ tomorrow _ \--”

 

“No, Al,” she interrupted, losing her cool. “You were having lunch with him on  _ Thursday _ . Before that, it was Monday. Before  _ that _ , it was twice last week, so forgive me if I no longer find ‘I’m having lunch with him tomorrow’ credible.”

 

His eyes flashed. “How  _ dare _ you---”

 

“I analyze the evidence in front of me, Al, I’m  _ very _ good at it, so please do not insult my intelligence by assuming that it has escaped my notice that you tried and failed four times to make this happen, but on my  _ first _ attempt, here we are. I gave you two weeks. Then I got tired of waiting. I told you before, I don’t appreciate feeling like I’m being kept a secret, like I’m something to be ashamed of. So I decided that if you weren’t going to tell him, I would. You had plenty of time and plenty of chances, and you chose to ignore them all, so don’t for one second assume that you have anyone but yourself to blame for your current situation.”

 

And without waiting to see his reaction, she strode back to Scorpius and Rose. Rose’s frown had deepened, but Scorpius looked like he was holding back laughter. She smiled at them and said, “Sorry about that. We’ll let him snit for a little, and then hopefully, he will be able to get over it and join us.”

 

“You know,” Scorpius said thoughtfully, “I think you may be the best thing to ever happen to Al Potter. Someone who can give him a taste of his own manipulative medicine.” Scorpius grinned at her and she grinned back. And then the sound of the door made them turn.

 

Al was striding out of the restaurant. Honoria rolled her eyes, and Scorpius echoed the gesture. “Al!” he called after his friend. “Come on, Al, we’re  _ joking _ !” But Al didn’t slow, turn around, or acknowledge them in any way. Scorpius sighed and shook his head. “I should probably go talk to him,” he said indulgently. “Give me a sec, would you?”

 

And finally, Rose spoke. “No, Scorpius,” she said, staying his movement with a hand. Her voice had an odd quality to it. “I really think I should go.”

 

“And why is that?” he asked his wife with a laugh. But Rose just fixed him with a suddenly heated look that startled both Scorpius and Honoria.

 

“Because at the moment, I’m the only one who isn’t laughing at him.” And without a backward glance, she followed her cousin outside.

 

Honoria rolled her eyes again, but for the first time, Scorpius looked uneasy. “They’re both just overreacting,” she told him.

 

“Yes,” Scorpius finally agreed, tearing his eyes away from the entrance. “You’re probably right. Al always has been sensitive about his love life, but heavens knows he meddled enough in ours.” He attempted a smile, but he still looked uncertain, which made her feel briefly uneasy once more.

 

_ Remember the excuses _ , she reminded herself forcefully, and the unease slipped away. A waiter appeared then and led them to their table after they assured him that the rest of the party would be joining them soon. 

 

“How did this even happen?” Scorpius asked once they were seated. “You and Al? I never would have thought, not in a million years . . .”

 

“We met at the wedding,” she answered with a shrug, trying to keep the goofy smile off her face. “And it was . . . Gods, Scorpius, it was like Fate. I’ve never felt anything that strong for anyone before. And the first two weeks were  _ amazing _ , just  _ phenomenal _ .”

 

“I’m gonna stop you there,” Scorpius said with a grin. “There are some details I really don’t need. But I’m glad to hear that.”

 

She smiled, but it didn’t last long. Thinking about those first two weeks . . . well, it was hard, given how tense the most recent couple weeks had been. Given how angry he’d been with her when he’d stormed out. “It’s been . . . rougher lately,” she admitted to Scorpius. “Because he wouldn’t tell you.”

 

“Which I really can’t wrap my head around,” Scorpius said, frowning. “I can’t imagine why he hasn’t said anything about this.”

 

“Can’t you?” Both Honoria and Scorpius jumped, caught off guard by Rose’s return. Her voice was hard and her eyes were blazing. “I hope you two are happy with yourselves,” she said when she had their attention. “I really do. I hope you’re pleased.”

 

“Where’s Al?” Scorpius asked. Rose’s reply was short and to the point.

 

“He’s gone home.”

 

Honoria rolled her eyes. “Seriously?” 

 

The blazing in Rose’s eyes intensified. “Yes, he decided he’d rather spend the evening alone than stay here and be ridiculed.”

 

“Oh, please, no one was ridiculing him---”

 

“No? Let me grab the nearest Pensieve and see the evening from your perspective. Sounds like it would be unrecognizable.”

 

“Rose,” Scorpius said in an undertone, reaching up for her hand, but she moved it out of reach. 

 

“I really can’t believe the pair of you,” she continued. ‘You are supposed to be his best friend,” she said to Scorpius before rounding on Honoria, “and  _ you  _ are supposedly in love with him, but I wouldn’t guess either from the way you’ve treated him tonight.”

 

“Rose, he’s overreacting,” Scorpius said, trying to reason with his wife, but she just gave a short, humorless laugh.

 

“He’s really not.”

 

“Rose---”

 

“When was the last time Al had a serious girlfriend, Scorpius?” Scorpius seemed caught off guard by the question, and Honoria realized with a start that she didn’t know the answer.

 

“I, um . . .” Scorpius looked away, frowning as he tried to come up with an answer.

 

“The answer is never,” Rose eventually supplied for him. “He’s never had a serious girlfriend. Since we hit puberty, the closest he’s come was that girl Caroline, who he dated for two weeks about two years ago. Do you remember why he ended it?” Scorpius’s eyes stayed on the ground and his mouth stayed shut. Rose just waited, and eventually Scorpius spoke.

 

“She was using him to make a move on James.”

 

“That’s why most of his relationships have ended, you’ll recall. Because they were a ploy to get close to James or the girl wanted to capitalize on Uncle Harry’s fame and Al’s connection to it. Usually Al susses it out in a matter of days, but Caroline, now, she was better at the act. Better at lying, better at manipulating him. So it took him longer to spot the signs. But when he did, when he ended it with her, he was back to his old self in a matter of days. Al has  _ never _ had a serious girlfriend. He’s never been in love before, and you and I both know that’s not the easiest confession to make to someone under the best of circumstances, let alone when the person you’ve fallen in love with is the girl your best friend used to be engaged to.”

 

The silence was deafening. Something hot and uncomfortable had landed in Honoria’s stomach, stealing warmth from hands she found herself knotting together to keep from shaking. She was having troubling processing everything Rose was implying, but the gist of it was starting to seep into her brain -- the knowledge that she had missed something huge and made a massive misstep. 

 

“Honoria and I were never -- Al  _ knows _ that.”

 

“What the hell difference does that make to him?” Rose demanded. Honoria could feel herself growing smaller by the moment, and she searched desperately for some slip of her righteous anger to hold onto, some reason that had driven tonight that was still standing. But they were slipping away fast. “Romantic or not, she was a huge part of your life, and after years of being determined to dislike her, Al goes and falls in love as soon as he meets her. Could you possibly exercise some empathy and try to understand how much Al was struggling with figuring out how to tell you? Knowing that telling you would bring on this reaction? Knowing that telling you would set him up to be teased and ridiculed? He was dreading it with every fiber of his being, Scorpius.”

 

“Dreading it doesn’t give him the right to put it off,” Honoria said softly, too soft to really be heard.

 

“What?” The word was short and clipped, and Honoria had to force herself to push through the flush of shame and meet Rose’s eye.

 

“Dreading it doesn’t make putting it off okay,” she said, louder and clearer. “Courage is in facing unpleasant things head on.”

 

“Like talking to your boyfriend about your frustrations instead of sneaking around behind his back to put him in his place?”

 

The comment was a slap to the face, and the worst part was, she deserved it. She flinched away as if the words had been a physical attack. When Rose spoke again, that feeling only intensified.

 

“Al knows that courage is in facing unpleasant things head on, Honoria, believe me. You clearly don’t know him very well, but he is fastidious about doing things the right way. Being fair and unselfish and not taking the easy way out to spare himself trouble or discomfort. He wanted to do it  _ right _ .” Her focus was back on Scorpius, a relief to Honoria because with Rose’s anger directed at her, she felt she couldn’t breathe. “And that meant talking to you face to face, in person. Not in a letter. Not dumping it on you over the mirror as you were being pulled away. In person. And the fact that he hasn’t been able to is not his fault. How many lunches have you cancelled in the past two weeks?”

 

Honoria snuck a glance at Scorpius. His eyes were closed and he swallowed painfully before he answered in a voice so quiet she almost couldn’t make it out. His answer made her stomach plummet. “Four.”

 

“Four,” Rose repeated. “Do you know what he said outside? He said he wished he’d known two weeks ago that he was the only one who gave a damn about treating the situation with respect because he’d have saved himself a lot of anxiety and anguish. But instead, do you remember what he did, Scorpius, every time you cancelled on him? Instead of saying, ‘I know you’re busy, call me when you have time,’ like he’s done every other time something cropped up at the office, Al rescheduled with you each time for your  _ next available  _ afternoon. Do you remember that? Do you remember me telling you three nights ago that he actually called the house looking for you? Do you remember the look of panic in his eyes tonight when we said we were meeting Honoria? Do you remember the desperation in his voice when he asked to speak to you privately? Remembering all that, do you think that maybe there was something important he wanted to tell you?” 

 

She was shaking with the force of her anger, it came through in her voice as she lost the calm composure that had carried her this far. Honoria’s eyes were firmly on the table, and she didn’t think she could raise them to meet Rose’s if she tried. She certainly had no words to offer in her defense. Scorpius apparently felt the same, for there was only silence from his side of the table.

 

“He was scared stiff of your reaction, Scorpius. And then he wasn’t allowed to control how you found out. He was blindsided, tricked into a meeting by someone he trusted, and  _ then _ ? Instead of taking two seconds to  _ think _ about what he was going through, you  _ mocked _ him. Made all this  _ his _ fault. And until I came back to this table and spelled things out for you, you sat here believing that he was overreacting. That he  _ deserved _ what happened to him tonight. And you.” Honoria could feel Rose’s focus shift to her and seriously considered Apparating away from the table, anything to make all this stop. “You love him? You love him, but you orchestrate something like this?” Tears stung her eyes at the incredulity and disgust in Rose’s voice. “I am so ashamed at the pair of you.”

 

The silence stretched between the three of them, thick and heavy and oppressive until it was broken once again by Rose. “I’m going home,” she said simply. “I’m not hungry anymore, and frankly, I can’t stand to look at either one of you a moment longer.”

 

Honoria had never been so berated in her life, never gone from triumph to self-disgust so quickly. She closed her eyes against tears of shame, willing herself not to start crying in the middle of the restaurant. Rose had spoken quietly enough throughout to avoid causing a scene, but Honoria still felt as though the eyes of the whole place, the whole world, were on her, heavy and piercing with judgement and scorn. And it wasn’t that she didn’t feel she deserved it, but . . .

 

“I thought . . . I thought it was just more excuses.” The words came out in a whisper.

 

“What?” Scorpius’s voice sounded as hesitant and lost as hers did.

 

“Before, when he didn’t want to meet me, he made all those excuses,” she said, forcing herself to look at him, because he would remember. He would know what she meant. He knew her, he’d been there, he’d know she hadn’t entirely been in the wrong. “That he was busy with work or family stuff, and this was just, it was more of the same.” He was shaking his head before she had finished, which twisted her stomach even more.

 

“Hell,” he said, bringing a hand up over his eyes. After a moment, he dropped it and met her gaze, apologetic and guilty. “Those weren’t Al’s excuses,” he said, and it took her a moment to understand what he was saying. 

 

“What?”

 

“Those weren’t Al’s excuses,” he repeated.. “They were mine. I would invite him and he would ask if you’d be there. I wasn’t going to lie about it, he’d have killed me, but he was always -- upfront about the fact that he was saying no because he didn’t want to meet you.  _ I _ was the one who made excuses for him, to soften the blow. He didn’t ask me to, I just . . . felt awkward revealing how much he disliked you. But it was me, Honoria. Not him.”

 

She felt as though someone had pulled a rug out from under her. She felt like her world was imploding. She pressed her eyes shut and couldn’t stop the sting of tears this time. “How badly have I messed this up?” she asked in a whisper, her voice ragged and desperate.  Suddenly, Scorpius’s hand was on hers, an energy filling him that he hadn’t had since his wife had returned from her conversation with Al.

 

“Go to him,” Scorpius said earnestly. “Tonight. Right now. Go to him, apologize, explain the misunderstanding. Be sincere. He’ll respond to those things.”

 

“Positively?” When Scorpius didn’t answer, fear stabbed at her. “Scorpius, what if that doesn’t work?” she asked, hating how young she sounded, how terrified.

 

“It’s over for sure if you don’t try.”

 

The stab of fear flared bright and sharp at that. “Over?” she repeated, dumbfounded. Was that really what they were talking about? The end of this amazing relationship, because of one stupid mistake? Was it really that bad?

 

But of course it was. Of course that was what they were talking about. She’d heard Rose, she’d seen how angry Al had been. She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and stood. Scorpius looked at her sorrowfully, with pity and compassion. “Good luck,” he said, which didn’t make her feel any better.

 

Apparating to Al’s was the easy part. Bringing herself to knock on his door was much harder. 

 

When she got no answer, she knocked again. Then she called his name. “Al?” She knocked again. “Al, please open the door.” She hated how desperate she sounded, but then, maybe desperate was good. But when more knocking failed to bring any sort of response, she faltered again. Was he even here? Rose had said he’d gone home, but had he? Would he really let her pound away at his door without giving any sign that he heard?

 

When she cast a silent  _ Homenum Revelio _ and learned that he was, in fact, inside, part of her desperation turned to anger, one hot, hard little flare of anger. “Al!” she said, pounding harder. “I know you’re in there.” No response. “So you won’t even talk to me now?”

 

That brought him to the door. “Bit rich, that, coming from you.”

 

He was angrier than she’d ever seen him, angrier than he’d been at the restaurant. He had opened the door just enough to stand in the opening and fix her with a fiery, iron stare. The open door was not an invitation to come in. His comment was a barb, not the beginning of a conversation. It took everything inside her to keep from snapping back at him because being angry was easier for her by far than being contrite.

 

“Can I come in?” she asked, keeping her voice soft.

 

“No.”

 

The anger flared up in her again, and she tamped it down. “Al, please. I think we should have this conversation in private.”

 

“Me too, but that courtesy wasn’t extended to me, and I don’t feel like welcoming you into my home, so say what you have to say out here or leave. Those are your choices.”

 

She swallowed. “I know you’re angry--”

 

“Do you? Managed to figure that out?” he interrupted, his voice harsh with sarcasm. “But with or without Rose’s help, that’s the real question.”

 

Honoria flushed, shame-faced and embarrassed. “I made a mistake,” she said to the floor through gritted teeth.

 

“Yeah, you did,” Al agreed, and with that she lost the hold on her temper, Scorpius’s advice be damned.

 

“They sounded like excuses!” she snapped. “Four cancelled lunches? That sounds like an excuse, and an unoriginal one at that. What do you want from me?”

 

“ _ Trust _ .” He flung the word at her. “I have  _ never _ lied to you, Honoria, not  _ once _ . I am sorry if the truth doesn’t sound truth-like enough for you, but that is  _ not _ on me. You asked me why I hadn’t told him, and I told you the truth  _ every _ time. And I was more than happy to explain it as well, to tell you what’s been going on at the Ministry to keep him so busy and to explain why it was important for me to do it in person, but  _ you _ stopped that from happening. You refused to have the conversation.”

 

“You could have forced the issue,” she pointed out, and his eye blazed.

 

“I’m not in the habit of forcing women into situations that clearly make them uncomfortable,” he replied. She couldn’t gain an inch of high ground, and it was destroying her. _ Apologize _ , Scorpius had said. But the words stuck in her throat. Angry as Al was, would he even believe them? 

 

“I’m uncomfortable right now,” she said to the floor, which was true. She  _ hated _ the thought of his neighbors behind the doors lining the hallway, listening to the argument. She thought maybe the admission would convince him to let her inside, but when she risked a glance at him, there was no softening in his eyes. If anything, he looked angrier. 

 

“Don’t do that. Don’t you dare. You cannot put this on me. What was it you said earlier? Don’t for one second assume that you have anyone but yourself to blame for your current situation?” 

 

“Al---”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

She faltered, over-thinking it, trying to find the words that would sway him. “I want to fix this,” she finally said, hoping that if she used his phrase, if she appealed to the idea that drove so much of his life, it might get through to him. It might open the door to conversation that she had unwittingly shut. 

 

But when he spoke, his words made her blood run cold. “Well, I don’t,” he said. She stared. 

 

‘You don’t -- you don’t mean that,” she whispered, desperately hoping the words would turn out to be true. A breath of harsh laughter escaped him.

 

“You lied to me,” he said, his voice pointed and unyielding. “To my face. You didn’t trust me, or believe that I was telling you the truth. And when you had a problem with me, instead of talking to me about it, like an adult, you went behind my back with the intention of setting me up to be humiliated in front of my best friends. The first two, I could forgive. But that last? Why would I spend my time and energy trying to rebuild a relationship with someone so vindictive and callous and petty? Why would I want to be with that person in the first place?”

 

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, this wasn’t happening, it wasn’t.

 

“Al.” The word came out a breathless whisper, half a sob, but he was unmoved. 

 

“Goodbye, Honoria.” 

 

He took a step back and began to close the door, and she couldn’t let that be the end. She stepped forward and grabbed his wrist, desperate, pleading. “Al, please. I’m  _ sorry _ .”

 

He looked down at her with something almost like pity. Almost. 

 

“If you’d led with that,” he said, “it might have carried some weight.”

 

He removed his wrist from her grasp and shut the door with a firm and final  _ click _ . 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued.


	5. Chapter 5

Adjusting to the end of his relationship with Honoria Ridgeton was just as difficult to adjusting to beginning of it had been, and it was really starting to piss Al off. 

 

Counting Hogsmeade visits and holiday balls, Al had gone on nineteen first dates in his short lifetime. Nineteen first dates, but only seven second dates, which probably said a lot about a lot of things, but Al chose for it to say that he could usually tell in one short evening when he was being used. Of those seven second-date girls, only two of them had slipped past his radar. Laney, who asked him on date three how weird he’d feel drawing a scar on his forehead for her (very, very weird, but at least she’d asked, and he’d thanked her for that before telling her that they should never see each other again), and Caroline, who had played Al’s perfect woman until she’d gotten into a room with James and immediately tried to seduce him (James had been angrier about that than Al had, which had become funny in hindsight).

 

Two -- now three. Laney, Caroline, and Honoria Ridgeton, who  _ would not leave him alone _ .

 

If she had been pestering him in person, that would have been one thing. He could have been angry with her anew for not respecting his wishes. But no, she hadn’t contacted or spoken to him at all since he’d broken things off. He hadn’t even seen her. It was his own brain conjuring her around every corner, fixating on her when there was nothing else to occupy his time, and after a month of this, he was really fed up.

 

He coped by throwing himself into his work. He volunteered to stock storerooms, scour bedpans, and file paperwork, all the menial tasks that most Healers felt were beneath them. But Al had first studied under Madame Pomfrey who had instilled in him a good, solid work ethic. Also, if no one else wanted to do those jobs, then Al would be left alone. He also willingly took duty on the “short stick floor” (spell damage), and volunteered for night shifts. He figured if he wasn’t going to be sleeping at night anyway, he might as well be doing something productive instead of dwelling on Honoria.

 

It wasn’t a great way to live, but he knew, he  _ knew _ , if he could just get control of his mind, he could get past this and get over the inconveniently lingering feelings. It was just a matter of discipline. And in the meantime, he could hide it. He was, at least, good at that. 

 

“Merlin, Al, you look like hell.”

 

Al dragged a hand across his face, pulling himself out of his troubled thoughts as Scorpius slid in across from him. 

 

“Working 36 hours straight will do that to you,” was all he said in reply, but Scorpius fixed him with a sharp gaze that missed nothing.    
  


“Working 36 hours straight accounts for the circles under your eyes and your eight o’clock shadow,” Scorpius agreed cheerfully, leaving his point clear but unsaid.

 

“I’m fine,” Al said.

 

“You’re miserable,” Scorpius replied, no longer beating around the bush.

 

“I’m not miserable,” Al countered, and Scorpius just fixed him with another look.

 

“Deflect the rest of the world, Al,” he said softly. “Don’t deflect me.”

 

Al sighed and rubbed his face. “I’m fine,” he said again. Scorpius sat back in his seat and shook his head, almost chuckling, but his eyes were kind and sympathetic, and thankfully, he let it drop. “How’s work? Are you any closer to catching this Shearson guy?”

 

It was Scorpius’s turn to rub a hand across his face. When he spoke, it was in a voice that sounded of practiced repetition. “I’m not at liberty to discuss any ongoing investigations, but I can assure the Wizarding community that there is no cause for alarm.”

 

“Well, that’s a rehearsed government answer if ever I heard one.”

 

Scorpius sighed. “Honestly, Al,” he said in an undertone, the words for Al’s ears alone, “I’m starting to think we’re never gonna catch him. He knows what he’s doing. He’s not like Voldemort or Grindelwald or Agrabatali. He doesn’t want to rule the masses directly. He gets off on controlling people through fear. He wants chaos and destruction, and he’s real close to getting it.”

 

“You all still trying to cover every public event?”

 

“The ones we know about, yes. We are encouraging event coordinators to hire private security, though.”

 

“Without causing a panic?”

 

“It’s a delicate balance, I won’t lie,” Scorpius said wryly. 

 

Talk about work took them through the meal, and as their time together wrapped up, Scorpius asked, “How are you doing really, Al?”

 

Al sighed and closed his eyes, debating internally how to answer.  _ Deflect the rest of the world _ , Scorpius had said.  _ But don’t deflect me _ . But what if the person saying that was the person Al most wanted to deflect? Not because he wanted to lie to Scorpius or hide anything from him, but because it was so impossible to hide from him. He knew Al too well, and that was terrifying. 

 

But it was also comforting on some level, knowing he couldn’t hide. And after a month, he was so tired of hiding. So when he spoke, it was the whole truth. He let all the deflection fall away. 

 

“I can’t get her out of my head,” he admitted. “It’s driving me mad. Laney, Caroline, all those other girls who just wanted to use me, I didn’t give them a second thought after I ended things. Like all attraction vanished once they showed their true colors. But Honoria’s kept some hold, and I can’t shake it, and I --” He broke off. “I’m dealing,” he finally said. “It’s rough, but I’m dealing. And I will be fine.”

 

Scorpius didn’t say anything. He just fixed Al with those intense gray-blue eyes, the fingers of one hand pressed against his mouth, and considered him. After an uncomfortable moment of this, Al said, “Say it.”

 

“Say what?” The question was innocent enough, but it still evoked a glare from Al. Scorpius knew very well  _ what _ .

 

“Whatever it is you’re not saying.”

 

Scorpius almost smiled at that, the corner of his mouth twitching upward, but in the next instant, he shook his head. “No,” he said, and Al raised an eyebrow.

 

“No?” he repeated. “I’m giving you carte blanche to say whatever you like, and you’re turning it down?”

 

“What I have to say will make it harder for you to be fine,” Scorpius said simply. “So I shall refrain.”

 

It wasn’t quite fair, Al mused, for him to word it like that. One of Al’s defining Ravenclaw traits was his insatiable curiosity. A statement like that had Al itching to unpack it, but he didn’t dare. His mouth couldn’t be trusted. If he opened it to respond, who knew what might come out? So he sat back in his chair and pressed his lips together, tracing the grain of the table through a ring of condensation his glass had left behind at some point, and letting the conversation lapse into silence. 

 

But he was dwelling now, dwelling on Honoria and what she must have said to Scorpius to put that look on his face, what she must have done to give him things to say that he wouldn’t say. And he couldn’t do this anymore, suffer through the thoughts of her with no knowledge to guide them, so, to the table, he said, “How is she?”

 

After a second, he looked up and met Scorpius’s eyes. Scorpius was just looking at him, but with no judgement, no raised eyebrow, and thankfully no pity. He just considered him for a long moment before he spoke.

 

“She’s fine,” he finally said. “In the same way that you’re fine,” he added before Al had a chance to react one way or another to the notion of Honoria actually being fine. “So she’s miserable, but she puts on a good face. She knows what happened is her fault, she feels awfully about it, but she knows there’s nothing more that she can do. So she’s dealing as best she can. She’s throwing herself into her work -- she’s even volunteered to help her mother plan this gala they help throw every year, and she  _ hates _ formal events like that. But she’s doing it because she needs to keep busy.”

 

_ We cope the same way _ , Al thought before he could stop himself. For a moment, he panicked, trying to stop the thought, before he decided there was no need to. They  _ were _ coping the same way. They were coping the same way because they thought the same way. They understood each other on that level, that was part of why they had worked so well early on and why the end of the relationship had hurt as badly as it had -- because she had so utterly failed to understand something that should have been obvious. 

 

He shook his head, desperate to clear it. “Thank you for not telling me that if I wanted to know, I could ask her myself,” he said softly. Scorpius let out a heavy sigh.

 

“Look,” he said. “I understand why you did what you did. I don’t agree with it, and I wish I could convince you to change your mind, but I understand it. And I of all people know how hard it is to let go even once you’ve decided you need to.” Al smiled at that, and it almost reached his eyes. “That being said,” Scorpius said, and Al stifled a groan, dropping his face into his hands. 

 

“You’re about to make me regret every good thing I’ve thought about you in the past few minutes, aren’t you?”

 

“Hey, we’re very similar, you and I, and it’s not my fault the tables have turned. But I, like you, am hoping for and working toward reconciliation, even as I respect your decisions. To that end, I have one question to ask.”

 

“Just one?” Al asked with a raised eyebrow.

 

“Just one.”

 

“Out with it, then,” Al said, with a wave of his hand.

 

“I was as much of an arse to you that night as she was.” Al opened his mouth to protest, but Scorpius silenced him with a raised hand. “Don’t argue; I was. But you forgave me without fuss. Why not her? Why doesn’t she get a second chance, Al?”

 

Al was silent for a moment, remembering for a moment the marked differences between Honoria standing outside his flat and Scorpius standing outside his flat. He remembered the look of regret on Scorpius’s face, and his simple but straightforward apology. He remembered the tells he could spot at twenty paces that spoke to his best friend’s state of mind, the horror at his behavior, the genuine desire to make things right. He remembered all that, held up against Honoria’s so-called apology, and he said softly, “Three reasons.”

 

Scorpius blinked. “Seriously?”

 

Al narrowed his eyes, bemused. “Yes?” he said uncertainly.

 

“Wow. All right. Sorry, I was kind of expecting that to be my coup de grace, but you’ve got a thought-out answer, so let’s hear it.”

 

Al gave him one long look before resuming his answer. “One,” he said, counting them off on his fingers, “you’re being too hard on yourself.” It was Scorpius’s turn to try and argue. Al spoke over him. “You are. Don’t get me wrong, you  _ were _ an arse, no doubt about it. But you didn’t orchestrate it. She did. You may have been thoughtless, but she was deliberately cruel, and that’s the difference. Two, our friendship has survived much worse than this. I’ve known you for eleven years, I know your character. With her, I feel like I saw her true colors that night. She proved she understood nothing about me and she showed that her first priority is herself. Whereas you were exhausted and not thinking straight and horrified at your own behavior. So three, when you showed up at my flat after that debacle, the first words out of your mouth were  _ I’m sorry _ . You said that your behavior was out of line, that you were an arse, and that you had no excuse. You owned up to what you had done and let me decide if I was going to forgive you or not. Her apology was an afterthought. She spent the conversation trying to convince me that she deserved forgiveness. She was  _ still _ trying to manipulate me.”

 

Scorpius was silent for a long moment, which gave Al the chance to get himself under control. Listing his reasons had gotten him worked up and frustrated again, feelings he’d thought he was past. And he didn’t know what he was going to do if Scorpius started arguing these points. He was braced for it, but it never came.

 

“That’s . . . unfortunate,” Scorpius said quietly. “I wasn’t in her head leading up to that night, and I wasn’t there at the end. So I can’t speak to those things. But I can speak to her character. I’ve known her for years, and I promise you, she is a good person. I don’t excuse what she did, but those aren’t her true colors. She’s not without flaws. I acknowledge that, and so does she. But I just want to make sure that you ended things because you really felt it was the right thing to do.”

 

“As opposed to what?” Al broke in. Scorpius grimaced, and Al knew he wasn’t going to like what he said next. 

 

“As opposed to your typical method of relationship sabotage.”

 

Al blinked. Stared. Gaped for a moment. Tried with all his might to wrap his head around what Scorpius had just said. Just  _ accused _ him of.

 

“ _ What _ ?” he eventually managed to get out. Scorpius looked apologetic, but that didn’t really help. “I don’t -- what are you talking about? I don’t  _ sabotage _ my relationships!”

 

“You kind of do.”

 

Al glared and started counting off on his fingers. “Caroline. Laney. Susan. Demi. Petra. Lenore. Do I need to keep going?”

 

Scorpius held up his hands. “Look, I’m not saying you haven’t dealt with more than your fair share of -- unfortunate admirers. But while your focus is on the crazies, mine is on the others. Uzumi. Bethany. Annabelle. Molly. The other Susan.”

 

“What about them?”

 

“Admit it, Al, you didn’t have the best reasons for ending things with them.”

 

“I had perfectly fine reasons!”

 

Scorpius raised a challenging eyebrow. “You broke up with Annabelle because she was too tall.”

 

“Her height had nothing to do with it -- she was unnecessarily intimidating. She did it on purpose.”

 

“And Uzumi?”

 

“We went on two dates and didn’t click.”

 

“Bethany?”

 

“Our schedules were incompatible. We never had time to spend together.”

 

“And Susan’s family was too intense.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re a Weasley!” Scorpius exclaimed with something like a laugh, finally showing the extent of his exasperation, but Al wasn’t fazed.

 

“They were intense in an unsettling way.”

 

“And Molly?” Scorpius pushed. Al crossed his arms.

 

“I’m not going to sit here and justify every romantic decision I’ve made in my life!”

 

“Al.”

 

“I maintain that it is weird to date someone with the same name as your grandmother!”

 

That drew some strange looks from the other patrons of the restaurant, and Al forced himself to calm down, cursing inwardly that he had let Scorpius get him so worked up.

 

Scorpius laughed and shook his head. “Al, I love you, seriously. But do you hear yourself?” he asked quietly. “Intense families, incompatible schedules,  _ weird names _ ? These are not reasons to end relationships. They are, if anything, minor bumps in the road. Now, girls who use you to seduce your brother? Try to catapult off of your fame? Want you to be a stand-in for your father because he’s unavailable? Absolutely, kick them to the curb. But I think you’ve put yourself too much in the mindset of  _ eventually something is going to go wrong _ , and I think, when you do find a perfectly nice girl, you still go in  _ looking _ for a reason why it won’t work. And so the second something isn’t perfect?” He snapped his fingers.

 

Al sat, jaw set, refusing to look at his best friend. He was wrong, he was just --- he was  _ wrong _ . Like Scorpius had said before, he wasn’t there, he wasn’t in Al’s head, so he really couldn’t speak to any of it. He didn’t understand the nuances. It hadn’t been the way Scorpius made it sound. There had been reasons --  _ good _ reasons. Just because Scorpius didn’t know them didn’t mean anything.

 

“Even if I do that, which I don’t, that’s not what happened with Honoria.”

 

Scorpius looked for a moment like he wanted to argue further, but he held himself back. After a moment, he nodded. 

 

The conversation stayed with Al; like the memory of Honoria, he couldn’t shake it. In his good moments, he was firm in his conviction -- Scorpius was  _ wrong _ . But in other moments, moments that came late at night and stole sleep from him, he was plagued with self-doubt.  _ Did _ he sabotage his relationships? He tried to think back to Molly and Annabelle and Uzumi and all the other second-date girls he’d broken it off with because things hadn’t gone as desired. Was Scorpius right?  _ Did _ he end things as soon as the littlest thing went wrong? And if he did have that pattern, was that what had happened with Honoria?

 

No, no even if he did sabotage things, that  _ was not _ what he had done with her. She had deserved it, whatever Scorpius had to say about her character. He had been in the right. He  _ had _ .

 

And yet, the voice in his head kept whispering.  _ And yet _ . . . 

 

A week later, he found himself in his parents’ kitchen, cleaning the dinner dishes with James. Lily had been helping them, but then Sylvie had asked a question about a broomstick aerodynamics issue that coworkers of Lily’s were working on, and that conversation had drawn their parents in and had been going on for the past quarter of an hour, with no signs of slowing down.

 

“You don’t want to be part of that?” Al asked James, jerking his head in the direction of the parlor. James laughed.

 

“Sylvie is the one who cares about logistics. If my broom will get me to the goals faster than the other bloke, I’m not too fussed about why.” 

 

That made Al grin.

 

Full family dinners at the Potters’ were a rare affair these days. Between James’ and Sylvie’s game schedule, Al’s night shifts, Lily’s random two-week lock-ins at the Department of Mysteries, his mum’s correspondance trips, and escalating problems only the Head Auror could solve, it was rare that everyone had a night off in common. But when it did happen, they were all quick to take advantage. 

 

Al was especially grateful this week. His own work schedule had forced him to cancel his weekly dinner with James, and an increase in Wizarding social events as summer drew to a close had kept Scorpius away from lunch. Al hadn’t had anyone to talk to since his last conversation with Scorpius, and he was far too in his head about the whole thing. He needed some outside perspective.

 

James and Sylvie knew that he’d broken things off with Honoria, of course. At noon the day after the dinner debacle, Al had gone to their flat instead of The Leaky Cauldron to meet Scorpius for lunch, greeting them with a deadened and weary, “I told you so.” So James knew about everything going on, but he didn’t know about the latest issue plaguing Al’s mind. While part of him shook its head that  _ James _ had become his go-to outside perspective on things like this, the rest of him told that part to shut it and addressed his brother.

 

“Can I ask you something?” he asked as they Scoured the last of the dinner dishes and Levitated them into the proper cabinets.

 

“Sure.”

 

“Do I sabotage myself?”

 

Beside him, his brother raised a bemused eyebrow. “In regards to . . . ?”

 

“Romantic relationships. Do I end things as soon as I hit a -- a bump in the road?”

 

“Honestly, Al,” James said, his voice tinged with regret, “I don’t know enough about your romantic past to have an opinion.” Feeling disheartened, Al nodded. That made sense, even if it wasn’t the kind of answer he wanted. “Who said you did?”

 

“Scorpius.”

 

“Ah.” James considered for a moment. “Then I think you’re asking the wrong question.”

 

Al turned to face his brother, crossing his arms. “The wrong question?” he repeated.

 

“Yeah. I don’t think this is a question of do you do this thing. It’s a question of how often is Scorpius wrong about the things he knows about you?”

 

Al was spared having to dissect that thought by his sister hurrying into the room, her face troubled. “Al?” she said. “Your bag is rather frantically calling your name.”

 

Frowning, Al followed her. When he fished his magical mirror out of the bottom of his bag, Scorpius’s face, sweaty, dirt-stained, and bloody, stared up at him. “Oh, thank Merlin and all the Founders,” Scorpius breathed in relief. Before Al could ask what the hell was going on, Scorpius said, “Are you with your dad?”

 

“Yeah,” Al said at once. “Dad?” 

 

But his father was already at his shoulder. “What is it?” he asked Scorpius.

 

“He’s here. Shearson.”

 

Al felt his stomach contract and his hands go numb. Though he’d only heard Scorpius talk about the guy a handful of times, everything Scorpius had said about him was enough to make Al’s blood run cold. His dad stayed calm and collected, however.

 

“Where?”

 

“The Everard Gala.”

 

“Who’s with you?”

 

“Peterson and Petrov. And Finnegan.”

 

“Civilians?”

 

“Close to three hundred.”

 

“Do you have eyes on him?”

 

Scorpius closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “We did,” he said. “But he has bombs, four of them, he said, each one triggered by the bomb set off before it. The first one went off and we lost him in the melee. Finnegan went after him, but I don’t know what success he’s had.”

 

“Who have you alerted?”

 

“Just you. The first bomb released a magical dampening field. No magic can get in or out the perimeter. We cast Patronuses, but they couldn’t go anywhere. It’s dumb luck I had the mirror and could get through to Al. He had this planned to a tee.”

 

“Ginny!” Al’s dad roared over his shoulder. Al’s mother was already in motion.

 

“On it,” she said, pulling out her wand. 

 

“How much backup do you need?” Harry asked.

 

“As much as you can send,” was Scorpius’s reply. “They won’t be able to Apparate in, not directly. They’ll have to aim about a quarter mile away and come on foot.”

 

“Nothing’s preventing that kind of travel, though?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

Ginny was off without further comment, heading to the back door and sending Patronus after Patronus into the night. Al forced himself to turn his attention back to the mirror.

 

“He said there were four bombs?” Harry asked. Scorpius nodded. “How many have gone off so far?”

 

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a loud explosion sounded through the mirror. Scorpius flinched, as did everyone in the Potters’ sitting room, and as the mirror jerked on Scorpius’s end, Al glimped a stately manor home spewing smoke and fire as debris rained down and terrified civilians screamed and ran for cover.

 

“Two,” Scorpius said raggedly. 

 

“I’m on my way,” Harry told him, and the connection cut out. Immediately, Al’s siblings were on their feet, insisting on accompanying their father, but Harry cut them off. “No. James, Lily, I mean it. Absolutely not.”

 

“Dad, we can help,” James insisted, ever the noble Gryffindor.

 

“No, what you can do is be two more civilians for a madman to target.” That drew cries of protest, but Harry shut them down. “James, you are a Quidditch player. Lily, you essentially work in an office. The both of you will  _ stay here _ .”

 

“Dad---” Lily tried, but he reached out and placed a hand on her cheek.

 

“Don’t make me worry about your safety, too,” he said gently. That swayed Lily, as such arguments always did. “Stay here, with your mother. If those mirrors are the only way to communicate with anyone on that estate, I need the lines open and manned. Stay here and help coordinate communication.”

 

Lily and James didn’t look happy, but they both nodded, though James needed Sylvie’s hand on his arm to fully agree. They filed out to help their mother while Harry holstered his wand and prepared to go. Al was right on his heels. The second Harry realized it, he turned on his son.

 

“ _ No _ ,” he said. “Didn’t I  _ just _ \---”

 

“Yeah, James and Lil may have listened, but I’m coming with you,” Al told him in no uncertain terms. “My best friend is there, in danger, and I’m a Healer.”

 

“You’re not a medic,” his father stressed. 

 

“You’re going to quibble over semantics?”

 

“You’re not trained for combat zones!” 

 

“So keep me on the perimeter! Set up a field station and bring the wounded to me. I won’t go anywhere near the danger, but you’re not leaving me behind. I’m of age and you can’t stop me coming.” He matched his father in height, and he used that to his advantage. Harry glared at his son fiercely. “We’re wasting time,” he said after a moment. His father closed his eyes, looking strained. When he opened them again, his green eyes brimmed with fire.

 

“You will do  _ exactly _ as I say at all times, do you understand me? You will not go  _ near _ the danger zone, and you will limit yourself to Healing unless called on to do otherwise. Are we clear?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

He still didn’t look happy about it, but he gestured for Al to follow him out to the back, where he said a few quick words in his wife’s ear. Her eyes snapped to Al, looking troubled, but then she nodded. “Be safe,” Al saw her whisper.

 

“You’re going?” James asked, and for a second, Al saw a younger version of his brother, eyes jealous and jaw set.

 

“I’m a Healer,” Al said. “And Scorpius is there.”

 

The look in James’s eye softened. He nodded, and Al pressed the mirror into his hand. “In case we need you,” he said.

 

“Harry,” Al’s mother said then, with steel in her voice, “if this escalation is more than you anticipate,  _ you call me _ , understand? None of your keeping me safe act. You know what I can do.”

 

“It’s one guy, Gin. I think we can take him.” But he promised all the same.

 

“Al,” his mother said, turning to him. “You make sure he keeps his word, okay?”

 

“Don’t worry, Mum,” Al said with a smile. “I’m not like the rest of you noble-minded protectors. The second I think you can give us a necessary advantage, I’m calling you in.”

 

“There’s my Ravenclaw,” she said, laying a hand on his cheek. “Be safe.”

 

The estate hosting the Everard Gala was in chaos. One wing of the stately manor house had collapsed; another was on fire. Nearly three hundred terrified party guests in various states of disrepair were fleeing the ruined house. Aurors Peterson and Petrov, with the help of the private security wizards hired for the event, were trying to keep order and set up a safe perimeter while they waited for backup. Auror Petrov came running up to them as soon as she saw Harry.

 

“Report!” Harry shouted, to be heard over the din. “How is this dampening spell affecting our magic?”

 

“Within the boundaries, not at all,” Petrov explained. “At least, not that we’ve been able to detect. It’s not a dampener so much as some kind of shield that keeps the magic performed here contained here. I think his goal was to hamper communication. If Malfoy hadn’t had that mirror, someone would have had to find the edge of the boundary and Apparate away, which would have taken time. It’s also making arrival and departure more difficult.”

 

“But he was here?” Al’s father demanded. “You had eyes on him?”   
  


“He was here,” she said darkly. “Amplified his voice, told everyone about the bombs -- four of them, each set off by the one before, each worse than the one before. Malfoy tracked his spell and was almost on him when the first bomb detonated. He got away in the confusion, and took out Auror Malfoy. Finnegan thought he had a lead, but I haven’t seen him in ten minutes.”

 

“Where is Scorpius?” Al interrupted, fear flooding through him.. “You said he took him out after the first bomb, but he contacted us.”

 

“He sustained injuries that made it impossible for him to pursue on foot. We’ve set up a medic tent on the other side of the field for the injured while we wait for backup from Mungo’s.”

 

“Dad--” Al said, but his father had anticipated him.

 

“Go,” was his reply, and Al set off running for the white tent. Inside, he found Scorpius directing injured party guests to Conjured cots, urging them to be patient and asking others to perform the rudimentary Healing charms most wizards knew on the less badly injured. All while pressing a bloodstained rag of cloth into his side and limping on leg with a bloody gash up the thigh. 

 

“We will discuss why you didn’t see fit to mention your injuries on the mirror call at a later time. For now, you are going to sit down, and I am going to put you back together.”

 

“I’m fine,” Scorpius said, dismissing the concerns. “Is your dad here?”

 

“Petrov is briefing him,” Al said, pulling his shrunken emergency med kit out of his pocket and expanding it to full size with a tap of his wand. When he looked up again, Scorpius was shaking his head.

 

“No, I need him  _ here _ . I have important information that Petrov doesn’t have, and I can’t cast a Patronus in this state.”

 

“But you’re  _ fine _ ,” Al muttered, sending a Patronus with Scorpius’s message to his father. Then he turned his wand toward his best friend. “Sit down before you faint from blood loss.”

 

Scorpius brushed the wand aside. “There are others here hurt worse than I am,” he said. 

 

“Well, I’m not here in an official capacity.”

 

Scorpius caught his wrist and met his eye, though his gaze was slightly unfocused and clouded with pain.  _ Concussion _ , Al thought, before Scorpius’s words registered.

 

“Yes, you are,  _ Healer _ Potter, until reinforcements from Mungo’s get here. Don’t make me pull rank on you. I know you’re not qualified as a field medic.” Al glared at him. “Seriously,” Scorpius said softly. “Nothing he did to me is life-threatening. That’s not true for everyone here.”

 

A glance around the tent told Al that was true, and his Healer instincts kicked in. Reluctantly, he moved to help the worst of the injured. Moments later, however, Healers in the deep green robes of field medics streamed into the tent, giving Al the excuse to return to Scorpius.The concussion was easily cleared, but the gash in his thigh was a curse gash, and required more treatment than field medicine could provide. Al feared the wound in his side would be more of the same, until he peeled the bandage away.

 

“Is that a  _ bullet wound _ ?” he asked in a voice that was barely controlled.

 

“Yeah,” Scorpius said, grunting in pain. “He has a gun.  _ Where _ is your dad?”

 

They heard him before they saw him. “I want the civilians  _ evacuated _ . We don’t know where the remaining bombs are or what they contain. I want to minimize casualties, but we need statements from everyone here. If they’re injured, they go to Mungo’s. If they’re just shaken, they go to the Ministry. Silvestri, take names and keep track of everyone. Patil, the Minister should be on his way. Meet him at the perimeter and fill him in.”

 

He swept into the tent and came straight for Scorpius. “If you stand up, I will poke you in the side,” Al told him firmly, still dressing the wound. But Harry knelt straightaway.

 

“What is it?” he asked. Scorpius glanced at Al for the briefest moment; if Al hadn’t been looking at him, he would have missed it. He hid a frown and kept working.

 

“There’s still someone in the building.”

 

Harry was instantly on alert. “Petrov told me it was empty.” Scorpius shook his head.

 

“Someone ran back in.”

 

“Who?” Harry demanded. “Why?”

 

“That magical data analyst we’ve been working with. And I don’t know why, she didn’t clear it with me,” Scorpius said, clearly angry about it. His frustration was making it difficult for Al to continue treating his wounds, and as soon as Scorpius said  _ magical data analyst _ , it became very important that Al focus on treating Scorpius’s wounds and only treating Scorpius’s wounds. “And she didn’t stop to explain. She just said she’d figured something out. I think she’s going after one of the unexploded bombs.”

 

Harry cursed. “When was this?”

 

“Just after I called you on the mirror.”

 

“How much time do you think we have before the next one goes off?”

 

Scorpius shook his head. “I don’t know. The first bomb wasn’t a bomb, as such. It was a slow fuse, laying the dampening shield and releasing a flammable gas lighter than air. Shearson appeared in the middle of the ballroom, made his speech, and shot sparks straight up. The gas ignited. I pursued, he shot me, and we started evacuating. The second bomb went off maybe ten minutes later? But more than ten minutes have passed since I called you. If the bombs are on timers and not triggered by our actions somehow, they aren’t consistent. There’s no way to guess what will happen next or when. That’s been his MO from the start -- unpredictability.”

 

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is so much easier when they want to take over the world,” he muttered. “You just wait for hubris to get the better of them.” He sighed, then asked, “Do you think Shearson is still on the premises?”

 

“Absolutely,” Scorpius replied at once. “He wants to watch the chaos he’s caused. He’s still here. I guarantee it.”

 

“Okay,” Harry said heavily. “I’m going to send someone in after --- her.” A quick flick of his eyes over to Al marked the hesitation. Al became aware that he was gripping his wand very tightly. “Who knows the layout the best?”

 

“Me,” was Scorpius’s answer. “But send Peterson.”

 

Harry nodded once sharply, then strode from the tent. “Magical data analyst,” Al asked through gritted teeth, his eyes on the gash in Scorpius’s thigh. 

 

“I’d have warned you, but I didn’t know you were going to be joining your father out here.”

 

“What’s she doing here?” Al asked in a voice he hoped was casual.

 

“Well, the Everards are her grandparents, they throw this gala every year. I mentioned that she was helping with it. But she’s working with us on Shearson because we need fresh eyes, someone who can analyze data and maybe see patterns we’ve missed. And apparently, she did, because she went tearing off for the East Wing despite it being on fire---”

 

Without warning, a massive explosion shook the ground and a roar like a thousand banshees deafened them. Scorpius was up on his feet despite his injuries and throwing back the opening to the medical tent. Al wasn’t protesting because he was right on his heels.

 

Where the East Wing of the manor had been was a towering inferno that writhed and shrieked and flew upward like no common fire Al had ever seen. Shifting within the flames were the forms of serpents and dragons and chimeras. 

 

“Fiendfyre,” Scorpius whispered in a horrified voice. Al’s whisper was more to the point.

 

“Honoria.”

 

He was halfway to the house before he realized he’d moved. He heard voices screaming his name from behind him. He ignored them. Honoria was in there. And he had to get her out.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning -- this is the worst cliffhanger yet. 
> 
> Enjoy! :)

It was astounding to Honoria how, all of a sudden, seemingly simple decisions somehow landed her in life-altering situations. She’d gone two decades with no real surprises or upstarts to speak of, and then she’d decided not to marry Scorpius Malfoy and her whole life turned upside down. She’d engaged in one conversation with Al Potter and fallen head over heels in love. She’d planned one disastrous dinner and completely destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to her. And three weeks ago, she’d agreed to help Scorpius with a case because he was desperate and she needed to keep busy, and here she was, running through a burning building, deliberately seeking out unexploded bombs and trying to catch an unpredictable, psychotic wizard. 

 

Scorpius had asked for her because he’d hoped that her background would be able to help her find a pattern everyone else had overlooked, but neither of them had really expected anything to come of it. Honoria knew a pity offer when she heard one. She knew Scorpius and the Aurors really did need the help, so she was happy to try, but what could a magical data analyst with a specialization in spell efficacy really do to catch a terrorist?

 

But when the second bomb went off at her grandparents’ gala, something clicked. Maybe the weeks she’d spent poring over data had chosen that moment to make sense, maybe the chunk of flying debris that grazed her just above the temple had knocked something loose, but whatever the reason, as she watched the second bomb explode in such a way that the force was directed  _ back _ toward the first bomb site, she understood, as clear as if Shearson himself was shouting it in her ear.

 

She could never have explained to anyone else, and she hadn’t had time to try. So she’d made certain her family was all right, told Scorpius that she’d figured it out, and headed for the burning manor at a sprint before Scorpius had a chance to stop her. 

 

She went straight for the ruined ballroom, because if she was trying to guess where the remaining bombs might be, the last place she’d expect to find one would be the place the first bomb had gone off. Which meant that was where it would be. She was certain of it. She was inside Shearson’s head now, disturbing as that thought was. But he wasn’t nearly as unhinged as he presented himself. He was too structured, too methodical, too deliberate. He wanted people to think he was completely unpredictable, but planning true unpredictability was hard, and Honoria was putting her life on the line to prove he hadn’t mastered the skill as well as he thought.

 

She got close enough to the burning ruin to see the bomb sitting in the middle of the debris-strewn floor, and she knew it hadn’t been there when they’d evacuated. It was all the confirmation she needed, but she was too late. That wing of the manor was too hot, and no magic could help her. If she’d had a fireproofing potion, she might have made it, but fire and heat ate away incantation-based magic. No spell she could cast would see her safely into the burning hall, let alone out with a bomb that she was certain would be set off once the casing reached a certain temperature.

 

So she backed up until she no longer felt that the heat was searing her skin from her bones, and thought,  _ Ballroom. Front entryway. Ballroom. Where would he put number four? Where would he put it so that three could set it off, but he’d be able to revel in panic and fear enough to satisfy him? _ She thought a bit harder, her mind whirling through data points and patterns of behavior and that careful, methodical need to prove he was better.  _ He’s given us clues _ , she thought.  _ We’ve never gone in blind. He sent false threats, but he also sent real ones. He named this gala. It’s no fun for him if we aren’t prepared. He wins too easily. He wants to be fair, wants us to have a fair chance at the game because then it’s more satisfying when he wins.  _

 

She knew where to go.

 

Jutting out from the back of the manor was a wing that felt out of place. During the Great War, the manor had found itself home to any number of orphaned children, and the annex of the west wing had been hastily constructed as a place to put them all. As time had gone on, it had fallen out of regular use, but Honoria had spent plenty of her childhood summers sneaking away to the old nursery and classrooms, and she knew they lay as far away from the ballroom as any part of the house. And sure enough, in the middle of the nursery carpet sat a dark trunk Honoria had never seen before, magical symbols shimmering over its surface. 

 

She didn’t recognize the symbols, which made them either very old, very new, or very foreign. Either way, she didn’t want to touch them, but she knew she had to get the trunk out. She had to get it out of the building and as far away as possible before the third bomb went off, and she was running out of time. 

 

“Okay, Honoria,” she muttered out loud. “It’s just another of Stephen’s puzzles. Diagnostics. And, go.” The informational and identification spells she cast flooded her with data. The symbols on the case seemed to be for containment, shielding, and dampening. They were keeping whatever magic was inside, inside, and they were keeping people like her from seeing what it was. The shielding meant her spells would bounce back at her. She couldn’t Vanish the case, or destroy it. But could she move it? A telltale blue glow from underneath identified a Permanent Sticking Charm, and she sighed. Saoirse was working on a non-destructive way to eradicate Permanent Sticking Charms, refusing to allow sticking charms to be some of the strongest magic in the world, but nothing was close to testing-ready yet. 

 

“Think, Honoria, think,” she whispered fiercely. “Creative problem solving.”

 

An explosion far larger than the first two shook the building and threw her to the ground. Stumbling to her feet, ignoring the pain radiating up her arm where the carpet had rubbed her skin raw as she fell, she ran for the nearest window. Fire,  _ living _ fire, ringed the sky around the far eastern wing. Fire that writhed through the sky in the shape of living creatures. Fire that thought with a mind of its own. Fire she had only ever read about.

 

She allowed herself exactly three seconds to be horrified, terrified, frozen with fear. Then she tamped it down and turned back to the trunk. “Focus,” she whispered fiercely in a voice that shook. “It’s just another reason to  _ focus _ .”

 

There was a solution to this. There  _ was _ . The trunk was stuck to the floor, but at  _ some _ depth, the Sticking Charm no longer held. She just had to carve out the whole section of the floor. But wait, she couldn’t remember -- was there cellar underneath this room? Best to treat it as if there was. The last thing she wanted was for the bit of floor with the trunk to fall ten feet. The impact might set it off before the Fiendfyre could.

 

She pointed her wand at the trunk and cast a delayed levitator, but the second she finished the incantation, her wand froze in the air, shivering and jangling. Panicked, she tried to release it, but it was fused to her fingers and growing hot and tight. The scent of powerful, raw magic like iron filled her nose, and her wand grew white-hot under her fingers. She could feel the magic filling it past its limit, could practically  _ see _ it swelling before her eyes. At the last second, she turned her face away.

 

Her wand exploded, the force of it knocking her onto her back, the impact chasing the air from her lungs. For two heartbeats, all was stunned silence. Then the pain hit her. 

 

It almost overwhelmed her. Her head throbbed where she’d hit it on the floor. Her jaw ached and it felt as if she’d been stabbed in the neck. She didn’t even want to look at her hand and arm, which burned so badly she wondered for a moment if the fire had already reached the old nursery. 

 

But pain was part of the job. They worked with unpredictable spells and experimental magic. Things went wrong, magic misfired, jinxes and curses had to be tested on living subjects. You pushed it down, finished the job, and dealt with it later.  _ Assess _ , the voice in her head urged sharply.  _ Assess so you know what to deal with later, then push through. _

 

Her head hurt. She was having trouble convincing her eyes to focus. She probably had a concussion. That was no big concern. She could deal with that later. Her jaw ached like someone had scraped it across a vegetable grater. When she put the fingers of her left hand up to the wound, the flares of pain made her flinch, and her fingers came back bloody. But though it stung like mad, it didn’t seem to be life-threatening. The wound in her neck was more of the same. A long cut from the feel of it, but shallow, if surrounded by tiny splinters that screamed pain at the slightest pressure. She could ignore it for the time being. Her wand arm, on the other hand . . . 

 

She steeled herself to look at it, bracing herself for the worst. 

 

The skin was swollen and bright red. More than a dozen gashes bled shallowly, and the top layer of skin was gone as if someone had taken sandpaper to it. Shards and slivers of what had once been her wand were embedded in the flesh from fingertips to elbow. But though blisters lined the inside of her forearm, nothing was blackened, and she could still move her fingers and wrist. She breathed a sigh of relief. It hurt, it hurt like hell, but she could deal with pain. 

 

Grunting with exertion and exhaustion, she forced herself to her feet once more. She had to get the trunk out of here. She had no wand, but that was just a hurdle to be overcome. It might even be a blessing in disguise. Magic with a wand required specific spellwork, deliberate incantations. Magic without a wand, though, was less defined. It could be shaped and bent to her will. 

 

She cupped her hands in front of her, ignoring the pain, and imagined her magic echoing the shape, cupping the ground around the bomb, gouging a fist-shaped hole out of the earth.She just had to  _ want _ it enough. The earth was resisting, but her will was stronger. She could do this. She  _ could _ . She could----

 

“Honoria!”

 

The sound of her name startled her, disoriented her. There was no one else here; everyone had been evacuated, she was the only person foolish enough to come back in. She turned to the sound of the voice and willed her eyes to focus on the figure approaching. Now she  _ knew _ she had a concussion, because there was no other reason why she would be seeing Al Potter in front of her. She shook her head, willing the hallucination to disappear. She needed to focus.

 

But then his hand closed around her wrist. “We need to go!” he shouted. Numbly, she shook her head and pulled back. His brow creased, and he looked her over, examining her. Gently, so gently, he gripped her chin with his fingers and turned her head slightly. She winced, and he grimaced. He pulled out his wand and waved it by her temple. She gasped, the fuzziness in her head clearing and throwing the world back into sharp focus. “Come on,” he said, trying to guide her toward the exit. More deliberately, she extracted herself from his grip.

 

“No,” she said. He stared.

 

“Honoria,  _ we have to go _ . The third bomb went off, it’s ---”

 

“Fiendfyre,” she finished for him. “I  _ know _ . That’s why I have to stay here and do everything I can to prevent  _ this _ bomb from going off.”

 

“Honoria---”

 

“Al, if the third bomb was Fiendfyre, neither you nor I want to know what the fourth one is!” she said emphatically, trying to get through to him. “If you’re here, your father’s here. If your father’s here, then all the Aurors at his disposal are here. They’ve quenched Fiendfyre before, I’ve read the case file. They can do it again. And I can buy them time!”

 

“You’re injured and from what I can see, you have no wand!” Al argued angrily.

 

“I’m in spell efficacy, I don’t need a wand!”

 

Al blinked, momentarily startled by that pronouncement, but he recovered quickly.  “You need focus, though,” he shot back. “You need to be able to concentrate. And I may have fixed your concussion, but you’re still in massive amounts of pain.”

 

“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth.

 

“You can pull that on someone who has no idea what wandless magic entails,” he replied. “But I’ve got a cousin who uses it all the time, but she’s only able to because she’s deaf and can see magic, so I know how hard it is. As much pain as you’re in, there’s not much you’d be able to do.”

 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she snapped.

 

“It’s not about confidence, it’s about medical fact,” he snapped back. 

 

“So cast some painblocking spells on me and get out of here!”

 

“Like hell,” he snarled. “I’m not leaving you in here on your own.”

 

With her good hand, she gripped his wrist. “Al,” she said earnestly. “Please. I know what I’m doing here. Quenching Fiendfyre takes twenty-one magicians casting two spells simultaneously. I can’t help from that end; without a wand, I can’t do magic that precisely. But I  _ can _ help from here. I have a plan, I can buy you time, and  _ you _ can go be one of the twenty-one. They need you.”

 

For a long moment --  _ too long _ , the voice in her head whispered -- he locked eyes with her, angry, upset, tense, conflicted. He didn’t want to leave her; he was going to insist on staying with her or something equally noble and disastrous. And he was going to waste too much time making his decision. “ _ Go _ ,” she whispered.

 

“I could  _ make  _ you come with me,” he whispered, voice ragged. 

 

“But you won’t,” she said. “Stop wasting time.” And she turned away, back to the chest, but his arm was at her elbow, spinning her back around. Their eyes locked for one second, and then he was kissing her, hard and fast. She stared at him, shocked, but he just turned and sprinted for the exit. 

 

Her head felt fuzzy again, like the concussion was back, but she forced it away. “Focus,” she reminded herself. Her focus was shattered moments later by Al’s reappearance. “Al,” she said, almost accusatory, but she stopped at the stricken look on his face. “What is it?”

 

“We’re cut off,” he said. “The fire has surrounded us. We’re both working from the inside.”

 

Panic welled up inside her, but she forced it down. “How close is the fire?”

 

“Twenty yards?” She did some fast calculations in her head, trying to figure out how much time they had before the flames reached the building. 

 

“Does anyone know we’re here?”

 

“I sent a Patronus, but I don’t know if it will survive through the flames. You said you had a plan?”

 

She let out a laugh that was half-sob. “I was lying to get you out of here.” He closed his eyes, his face pale.

 

“Of course you were.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “I never meant for you to follow me in here.”

 

Al shook his head. “I made my own choices. Okay. We need to protect the case from the fire. I’m going to Shield this area.”

 

“Al, Fiendfyre is going to eat through a Shield charm like candlefire through wax.”

 

“So I’ll cast several,” he said impatiently.

 

“The second you lose concentration--”

 

“Can you please just trust me, for once?”

 

The words stung and sent her straight back to the doorway of his flat one month before. For a second she couldn’t breathe, let alone respond. But she wiped sweaty palms on her dress robes, and the flare of pain brought her back to the old nursery. And somehow, she found herself calmer than she’d been since Shearson had appeared. 

 

“It’s not about trust,” she said, echoing his words. “It’s about magical fact. Shield charms aren’t self-sustaining. They require continued focus from the caster. The more you try to control at once, the harder it will be, and the second something breaks your concentration, they’ll all collapse.”

 

“Okay, okay,” he said, running a hand through his hair. There was an urgency in his eyes, in his movements, but no panic. Not yet. He was keeping his head, which was good. If he kept his head and she kept hers, they might find a way out of this. Somehow. “Is there a way to  _ make _ them self-sustaining?”

 

“I---” She started to say no, because there wasn’t, because spells were either self-sustaining or caster-connected, and they were designed that way for a reason. But then she stopped as the voice in the back of her head that made her so good at her job started asking why. After another second, she said, “ _ Theoretically _ , yes, I think. But there’s not been any research done or any testing---”

 

Al had her by the shoulders. “No time like the present.”

 

“I don’t have a wand.” He raised an eyebrow, an expression she had missed so much it hit her now like another physical ache.

 

“You’re in spell efficacy,” he said, echoing her words now. “I thought you didn’t need a wand.”

 

She straightened, and squared her shoulders. “I don’t,” she told him. Nodding, he released her and stepped back. She pretended not to notice his anxious glance out of the nearest window. She pretended she didn’t want to do the same. She lifted her wand arm, ignoring the pain, and focused on creating a Shield charm.

 

The first three attempts grew like soap bubbles in front of her hand, expanding to the size of Quaffles before collapsing and disappearing. “You can do it,” Al said from beside her, then, after another anxious glance out the windows, cast a giant Shield charm around them, reaching to the ceiling twelve feet above, spreading out another twelve feet in each direction from where they stood. She watched the motion of his arm, casting the spell, and suddenly felt about three years old.

 

“Idiot,” she berated herself in a mutter, then closed her eyes. “ _ Focus _ .”

 

She knew Shield Charms. She knew what they looked like as they were being cast. She knew the shape that a wizard’s wand made the magic follow to create them. That was the point of wands, in the end -- to make it easier for magic to follow the shapes of spells. She couldn’t just  _ make _ a Shield Charm -- she had to direct the magic. And she may not have had an actual wand, but she had the remnants of one, and with her training, that should be more than enough.

 

Moving her arm as if it was a wand in its own right, she drew the pattern, sending the magic down the path she wanted, ballooning away from them until it met magical resistance -- the Shield Al had already erected. And then she thought to self-sustaining spells, the tie-off at the end that separated them from the caster. Hardly anyone noticed or thought about these little, nuanced differences, but this was her job. She’d studied this in detail. She knew how to alter the spell. In her mind’s eye, she could see it.

 

When she opened her eyes, she could see it, too. A pearly dome ringing them. “Is it self-sustaining?” Al asked. Honoria braced herself and gripped her burned and blistered arm with the other hand. Pain shot through her, enough to make her scream, but when she had recovered enough to open her eyes, the Shield was still there. She grinned at Al, exhilarated. She’d done it!  _ They’d _ done it! 

 

Then she came back to earth. One Shield charm, even one as groundbreaking as hers had just been, wouldn’t keep them safe from Fiendfyre. Al had come to the same conclusion. “Can you tell me how to do that?” he asked her.

 

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. It would take too much time, time they didn’t have. “But I can show you.”

 

Standing behind him, her hand on his arm, she guided him through the process, and it  _ seemed _ to be working, but she knew from experience not to rely on “seem to be”s. They layered their charms, his then hers then his, over and over, gradually shrinking the space in which they stood, building a shield that wouldn’t last forever, but would hopefully last long enough.

 

Though the multiple Shields blocked out sound and made the world outside muted and strange, they could still tell when the Fiendfyre entered the hall.They were down to a space just big enough for them to sit in. They had layered shields over the bomb, too. They had reached a silent conclusion that this was no longer about survival. It was about giving those working to quench the fire enough time to do so. If the Shields they were building would stand free of the casters, even in the case of death, they could buy that much more time. 

 

Still, deciding that you would give up your life and actually facing the reality of imminent death were two different things, and when the Fiendfyre started in on their outermost Shields, Honoria had never been so frightened. Damn it, she didn’t  _ want _ to die. Without a word, Al gathered her into his arms, and they clung to one another as the inferno swirled around them, angry and lethal. She buried her face in Al’s neck and wept.

 

“I’m sorry,” she heard, like a breath, in her ear. Mystified, she pulled back to stare at him. His eyes were bright and his cheeks glistened, maybe from sweat, but maybe not. “I forgive you,” he whispered then, his voice ragged. “I should have forgiven you ages ago. Who cares about the damned moral high ground when I’ve been miserable for the past month? I’ve missed you so much, Honoria.”

 

“I’d give anything to have made different choices,” she whispered around new tears. He nodded.

 

“Me too. I love you.”

 

“I love you.”

 

The air grew hot inside their bubble of protection, then searing. The sound of the Fiendfyre was deafening now, the light from the flames white-hot and blinding. Honoria closed her eyes tight and held onto Al. 

 

There were ten levels of shields above them. Ten, then nine.

 

There were worse ways to die, she supposed. Fiendfyre was hot enough that death would be quick. And Al was here. Much as she wished she could have spared him, she was glad that she wouldn’t die alone, that she would die forgiven by the man she loved. 

 

Eight shields now. Seven. Six.

 

She only wished they could have more time. She only hoped their deaths would mean something in the end.

 

Five shields left. Four. Three.

 

She would die strong. She would die brave. She would mean something. They both would. Honoria Ridgeton choked back a sob and braced herself for the end. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has read this story and stuck with it! I hope the ending is everything you wished for!

Adrenalin was a funny thing. One of Al’s Healing Instructors called it Muggle’s Magic, since it could provide super-human strength, block pain, even slow time down. Of course, adrenaline didn’t _ really _ slow time down. It just allowed the brain to take in more information, so it  _ seemed  _ like time was slowing down. But even accounting for that, Al couldn’t help but feel that it was taking an awfully long time to die. 

 

Once he’d realized that, he began, slowly, to realize other things as well. Like the fact that it had gone quiet. The number of Shield Charms they’d erected had blocked most ordinary noise, but the full force of Fiendfyre bearing down on them had been deafening. Perhaps it  _ had _ deafened him. But no, he could hear the sound of his breathing, and Honoria’s, but he could no longer hear the fire. He also realized that the oppressive heat had lessened. It was still hot enough that breathing was a challenge, but he no longer felt like he was being roasted alive. Slowly, he raised his head and opened his eyes.

 

The world had gone grey around them. Above their head, two Shield charms still shimmered, a swirling grey fog butting up against the domes.  _ Ash _ , he realized. Ash and smoke. From a fire that no longer raged. The only remaining sign of a danger now past. 

 

“We’re alive,” he said, dumbfounded, his voice ragged and raspy. When his words prompted no reaction from Honoria, he said them again. “Honoria, we’re alive.” Slowly, Honoria lifted her head and stared, bewildered and confused. She shook her head. 

 

“I don’t believe it,” she said, bemused, bewildered, incredulous. Al knew how she felt. With something like a laugh, he pressed his lips to her hairline and reveled for a moment in the exhausted exhilaration that came with being unexpectedly not dead. 

 

Something across the room caught his eye -- figures, moving carefully through the charred and ruined hall. They were distorted by the Shields and by the bubbles of air floating around their heads, but one of them at the front of the group seemed familiar. That shock of red hair.  _ Lily _ , his tired brain supplied.

 

She caught sight of them. She was shouting something toward the people behind her, and then she was shouting something at Al, but between the Shields and the Bubble Head Charm, he had no hope of hearing it. He shook his head and tapped his ear. Her hands flew rapidly, forming two distinct signs that his brain took a second to decipher.

 

_ Are you okay? _

 

He nodded and signed back,  _ Basically _ .

 

Her hands flew again.  _ Is there a reason you haven’t taken your Shields down? _

 

Al narrowed his eyes in thought. “If this Shield is self-sustaining,” he said, prompting Honoria to lift her head again, “how exactly do we take it down?”

 

She stared at him for a moment, then laughed, exhausted and borderline hysterical. “I have no idea,” she said. “I don’t think we can, actually. Not the way you mean. I think they’ll have to be shattered.”

 

He nodded and pulled out his wand. In a flash she had her hand out, stopping him. “Not you,” she said, and when he looked puzzled, she clarified, “There are two Shields above you, stronger ones than usual, and you’re exhausted. You won’t break through, and your spell will just ricochet around and hit us.”

 

“Right,” he said. To Lily, who had waited through this exchange with impressive patience, he signed,  _ We can’t. Weird magic. Long story. You have to break through them. _

 

_ Me?  _ she asked.  _ How? _

 

_ Jinx,  _ he signed tiredly. _ Curse. The usual way to break a Shield Charm. _

 

_ I’ll hit you! _

 

_ Please don’t _ , he signed back, prompting Lily to throw her hands wide in exasperation. He’d have laughed if he wasn’t so exhausted. Instead he gave her a grim smile and kept signing.  _ Aim your trajectory. Base to dome. You can do it. _

 

“You can sign?” Honoria asked him while Lily turned to talk to whoever was behind her.

 

“I told you. My cousin is deaf.”

 

“I thought there were spells to compensate for hearing loss.”

 

“There are, and she uses them. When it suits her. When it doesn’t, we sign. And we’ve found it’s a useful skill to have.”

 

Lily had turned back to the Shield.  _ Make yourself small _ , she warned.

 

Al hunched around Honoria, then sat up and signed emphatically,  _ DO NOT HIT THE BOMB. _

 

_ I’m not an idiot _ , Lily shot back. Al flashed her the  _ I love you _ sign, then wrapped himself around Honoria, making them as small as possible.

 

A second later, the Shields exploded under the force of whatever spell Lily had sent into them. The smoky air from the hall rushed in to surround Al and Honoria where they sat. Al, unprepared, took in a lungful. As he hacked and coughed, voices surrounded him, shouting orders and directives, calling for aid. He felt Honoria being lifted from his grip, and he couldn’t catch his breath to tell them about her injuries, so he signed  _ Medic for her _ over and over until a cool pair of hands stilled his.

 

“They’re on it, Al,” his sister said gently. “Do you need one? Are you hurt?”

 

He shook his head. Someone handed him a bottle of water. 

 

“Shearson?” he gasped.

 

“They got him,” Lily said, and Al’s relief was palpable. He guzzled the water greedily, and when his breath was more or less back under his control, he turned to his sister. “You’ll have to do the same thing to free the bomb,” he told her in a hoarse whisper. “And it’s gonna be much harder--”

 

“I don’t need to release the Shields,” she told him. “Orion! Alistair! Over here.” Two wizards with DoM armbands came over, carrying some strange contraption of steel and pewter and magic. With careful precision, they enlarged it to fit over the still-Shielded bomb, then secured it to the ground. Lily counted down from three, and then a high-pitched whine made everyone flinch. It lasted for three or four seconds, and when the Unspeakables lifted the contraption, the bomb underneath was gone. Al stared.

 

“How---?”

 

“You know I’d tell you if I could, Al,” Lily said with a smile. “But it’s been completely neutralized -- your Shields, the protections on the case, the case itself, and whatever magic was inside. It’s all gone, no dangerous residue left.”

 

“Your people didn’t want to know what was inside?” Al asked with some surprise. Lily snorted. 

 

“Anyone in my department with any common sense doesn’t want that thing within ten miles of the Ministry or any populated areas. Some of the pure academics will complain about the loss of knowledge, but the Aurors are giving us access to Shearson, so we’ll get answers.” He nodded, but his brain was still processing. He felt sluggish, exhausted, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay upright. “You sure you’re okay, Al? You look horrible.”

 

“Just tired,” he assured her. “Where’s Dad? I thought he’d be the first one here.”

 

“Official Head Auror stuff,” Lily said vaguely. “But he should be--”

 

“ _ Where is he _ ?” 

 

His father’s voice echoed loud and furious through the smoky space. Lily raised a hand and shouted, “Over here, Dad.”

 

“Traitor,” Al told her. She just grinned at him and flashed the  _ I love you _ sign. The next instant, Harry had Al by the shoulders.

 

“Are you okay?” he demanded, searching Al’s face frantically for any sign of injury. Al nodded. “You’re  _ sure _ ?” his dad pressed. “You’re not hurt?”

 

“I’m okay, Dad,” Al assured him. His father caught him up in a bone-crushing hug, then. After a second of surprise, Al returned the embrace. 

 

Then Harry had him by the shoulders again. “What the  _ hell _ were you thinking?” he exploded.

 

“There we go,” Al said, having lost his filter in his exhaustion. “That’s more the reaction I was expecting.”

 

“You think because you’re my son, you can pull a stunt like this? You think I’m just going to look the other way while you recklessly endanger your life and the lives of others? Or that I’m going to ignore the fact that you disobeyed a direct order from the Head Auror?” 

 

Al had never seen his father this angry, and inappropriate as the response was, the formality of his father’s words made him smile. Disobeying the direct orders of the Head Auror was not why Harry Potter was so irate. 

 

“You think this is funny?” his father asked in a dangerous voice. Al shook his head, willing himself to stay upright.

 

“Dad,” he said, reaching up to grip his father’s arms, needing the anchor, “I know you’re pissed at me. You have every right to be. But frankly, at the moment, I’m too relieved that I’m still alive for this talk to have the impact you’re hoping for.”

 

His dad’s eyes flashed. “Albus---”

 

“Also,” Al interrupted, swaying on his feet as the telltale gray specks started to invade his vision, “I am about to pass out.” He didn’t stay conscious long enough to know if anyone caught him on the way down or not.

 

When he woke, it was morning, and he was in a bed in St. Mungo’s, ward six, if the mint-green tint to the walls was any indication. Ward six surprised him -- it wasn’t often used. It was for miscellaneous patients with ailments that didn’t fit the first five wards, or overflow if the other wards were full, or for those who insisted on absolute privacy. Al wasn’t sure which category he fell into. He felt much better for a rest. His skin tingled slightly, probably from burn treatment, but he felt refreshed and rested and ready to get some answers.

 

His father sat in the chair beside the bed. When Harry saw that Al was awake, he said, “And another thing,” as if continuing the tirade Al had interrupted by passing out, but his voice lacked the fear-driven anger that tirade had held. Al gave a breath of a laugh.

 

“And how many important meetings did you ignore so that you could be sitting there to make that joke as soon as I woke up?” he asked his father.

 

“Eight,” Harry deadpanned. Al laughed, which turned into a mild fit of coughing. Apparently his lungs weren’t quite as recovered from the heat and the smoke as he thought. His father placed a glass of water in his hand.

 

“Thanks,” he said, shifting to a sitting position so he’d feel like less of an invalid. “Lil said you caught Shearson?”

 

“We did,” Harry confirmed with a nod. “Or, actually--” Harry’s look blackened with frustration. “Draco Malfoy caught Shearson. A fact he is never going to let me forget. Blew his cover wide open, too, and then had the gall to tell me he was retiring when I suggested workarounds.”

 

He looked so put out about the situation that Al had to bite back a laugh. “How dare he,” he said instead, trying to keep a straight face. Harry narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

 

“Don’t take his side when you’re already in trouble,” he warned his son.

 

That sobered Al. His father’s frantic anger at the Everard Estate was not as amusing now as it had been when he’d been exhausted and going through adrenalin withdrawal. He chewed his lip and looked down at his hands fiddling with the blanket on his bed. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know I scared you.”

 

He heard a soft breath of laughter. “Scared me,” his father repeated in an undertone. “Al, do you remember when you were, maybe four, and your brother convinced you that the towels in your grandmother’s linen closet were Flying Cloaks?”

 

Al thought back. “Vaguely?”

 

“You tied one around your neck and took a flying leap from the top landing at the Burrow, and then tumbled headfirst down all three flights of stairs to the bottom.  _ That _ scared me. What you did at the Gala? Was much, much worse. Do you have any idea what it was like for me, watching  _ my son _ run into a building full of Fiendfyre, a building that was going to explode at any moment? Do you have any idea what I went through, knowing I had to choose between doing my job as a father and doing my job as an Auror, with the safety and well-being of my force and three hundred civilians and the surrounding countryside to think of, not just that of my son?”

 

Al’s eyes were fixed firmly on the blankets now. His father’s voice was soft, which was worse,  _ far _ worse, than the shouting had been. And there was no escaping it.

 

“I  _ had _ to be the Head Auror, I  _ couldn’t _ be a father in that moment, and that was one of the hardest realities I have  _ ever _ had to face, and I think you will understand the gravity of that statement. So yes, Al, you scared me. You could have  _ died _ , and I would have had to live with knowing that if I’d been just a little bit better at my job, I could have changed that. You could have  _ died _ .”

 

“I--I know,” Al said to the blankets, his voice very small and very young. “I thought I was going to. Not when I ran in -- that wasn’t -- but when we got trapped there, when we were under those Shields that shouldn’t have worked, with the fire all around us, getting closer and closer--”

 

For whatever reason, how close he’d come to dying was only just now hitting him. Maybe it was a symptom of survival, he didn’t know. He’d have to ask Lily, she was the expert. But even staring death in the face hadn’t made him feel like this. He’d been terrified, yes, but resigned. Stoic. Brave, if only for Honoria’s sake. But talking about it here, in front of his father . . . something about that moment broke him. His breath caught in a sob, he was shaking, he couldn’t see for the tears. His father didn’t miss a beat, just came to the bed and held him, as if he was a child again. Al clutched at his dad’s arms and rode out the emotions.

 

“It’s okay,” his dad murmured softly, stroking Al’s back. “It’s okay, Al. You made it out. We got you. You survived. You did more than that, you saved a lot of lives. Terrified as I was, I do have to acknowledge that if you hadn’t gone in . . . things might have been a lot worse. You saved a lot of people. You’re probably going to get a medal.”

 

Al shook his head. “It was all Honoria,” he said, more or less under control again. 

 

“That’s not how she tells it,” his dad said. Al sat up straight.

 

“You’ve seen her? She’s awake?”

 

“She never lost consciousness, unlike  _ some _ people I could name,” his dad said with a twinkle in his eye. Al struggled to look dignified.”She gave us a full statement last night, after she was treated. And it was . . . a pretty incredible account. You two worked some complicated magic.” Al shook his head again.

 

“She figured out how.”

 

“But it was your idea,” Harry pressed. “And you are one of only two magicians that we know of who are currently able to cast a self-sustaining Shield Charm. To that end, I have promised you to the Department of Mysteries and the Department of Spell Efficacy for the next two weeks, so they can work out how this magic is possible and how to recreate it.”

 

“Dad, I’d love to, really,” Al said, “but I have work, so . . .”

 

“I’ve already spoken to your supervisors here, and they’ve agreed this is what you need to be doing for the next fortnight.” Al groaned. 

 

“Come on, Dad. Can’t you get me out of it?” His father raised an eyebrow.

 

“We’re talking about helping wizardkind understand a new kind of magic with the potential to save countless lives,” he pointed out.

 

“Yeah, but they’re not gonna tell  _ me _ anything,” Al countered. “I’m gonna spend two weeks performing the same spell over and over again in minisculely different ways and not actually learn anything! That’s the worst kind of torture---” Something clicked into place as he said this, because if anyone already knew what Al would find torturous, it was his father. Al took another look at his father, eyes narrowed. “Is this my punishment?” he asked. “Is this how you’re punishing me?”

 

“Well, you’re too old for me to ground you,” Harry said with a smile. 

 

With a sigh, Al settled back against the pillows, accepting his fate. “Fine,” he conceded. “I’ll do it.”

 

“You didn’t really have a choice,” his father pointed out with another smile. 

 

“But,” Al continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “I’d like to point out that I’m getting very mixed messages about this whole thing, because first, you yell at me, and then you tell me I’m going to get a medal, but now I’m being punished. It’s all very confusing.”

 

Harry laughed. “Al, as the Head Auror, I recognize that without your contributions, the evening would not have ended as positively as it did, and and I am therefore grateful you were there and I commend you for your actions. However, as your father, if you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will kill you myself.”

 

Al smiled. “Noted.”

 

“At the end of the day, though . . . well, I can’t really put too much blame on you. As was pointed out to me quite forcefully, you are my son.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Just that, if it had been your mother in that building, I’d have done the exact same thing.”

 

Al colored and looked away. He wanted to tell his father that it wasn’t like that, but honestly, he wasn’t sure what it was like anymore. After a second, his father took pity on him. “You have a guest,” he said, nodding toward the door. Al turned to see Honoria in a wheelchair being pushed through the doors by Scorpius. He couldn’t stop the smile that lit up his face. 

 

“Two of them, looks like,” Al said to cover his reaction. Scorpius raised an eyebrow, though, and Al knew he wasn’t fooled.

 

“Just one, actually,” he said. “I am merely an escort, and then I must return to paperwork and meetings since  _ someone _ has insisted on sitting up here by his son’s bedside.”

 

“I would like to point out the irony that  _ I _ am being wheeled around by the man with a great cursed gash in his leg,” Honoria said pointedly. Scorpius just smiled.

 

“Healer’s orders.”

 

“Yes, you’ll listen to  _ those _ Healer’s orders, but not the ones that tell you to return to level four and get the curse on your leg treated instead of just neutralized.”

 

“Scorpius,” Al said in his most reprimanding Healer’s voice. “Go to level four and get your leg treated.”

 

“You’re not really in a position to be giving me health and safety advice,” Scorpius pointed out. Al glared, but Scorpius wheeled Honoria over to the bedside, limping noticeably. Once she was in place, he lifted a cane from the back of the chair and made his way up to Al, offering the best embrace he could manage -- one hand on the back of Al’s neck, pressing their foreheads together. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said roughly, and Al could hear the lingering fear and emotion, and he felt guilty all over again. He reached up and gripped Scorpius’s arm.

 

“Me too,” Al said, prompting a breath of laughter. 

 

“Do anything like that ever again, and I’m gonna kill you,” Scorpius continued. Al smirked.

 

“There’s a line. You’ll have to fight this one for the honor,” he said, jerking a thumb at his father. Scorpius stood back and looked Harry up and down.

 

“I’ve beaten him before.”

 

Harry laughed and stood. “All right, Scorpius. Let’s give these two a chance to talk. I’m going to take over your meetings and paperwork, and  _ you _ are going to go get that leg checked out. That’s an order, Auror Malfoy,” he said, speaking over a protest. 

 

  
“Aye, sir,” Scorpius said with a smile. He squeezed Al’s shoulder once, then limped from the room. Al ignored the knowing look his father shot him before he closed the door, leaving Al and Honoria alone.

 

“How’s your arm?” Al asked after only a second or two of thoroughly awkward silence.

 

“Oh!” Honoria said, grasping at the question gratefully. “It’s made me into something of a magical, medical anomaly, actually.”

 

Al raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

 

“Yes,” she said, examining the arm in question, which was heavily bandaged. “Last night while they were treating it, they brought in no fewer than seven different Healers, the last one was the Head of all Mungo’s, I think.”

 

Al stared. “ _ Seriously _ ?” he asked. “Healer Cartwright came to see you?”

 

“No, no,” Honoria corrected. “He came to see my arm. I don’t think he spoke three words to  _ me _ . And then, this morning, in the past two hours, I have had eight different magical experts brought in, including the head of  _ my _ department, who ventures out of his office about as often as your Healer Cartwright, sounds like,  _ and _ people from the Department of Mysteries,  _ and _ people from Ollivanders.”

 

“What is going on with your arm, exactly?”

 

Honoria rolled her eyes and shook her head, exasperated. “I’m not entirely sure, because no one is talking to  _ me _ about any of this, which is  _ infuriating _ because it probably falls into my area of expertise, but from what I can glean . . .” She trailed off, searching for the best way to word it. “I think my wand hasn’t realized that it’s not actually a wand anymore.”

 

“Wait,” Al broke in, confused. “What happened to your wand? I know you didn’t have one, but . . .”

 

Honoria blinked. “Oh!” she said in realization. “Right. You weren’t there yet. No, I tried to cast a Levitation charm on the bomb, and some magic I’ve never seen before locked my wand in place and established some sort of magical feedback that oversaturated my wand with magic until it literally exploded. The splinters embedded themselves all up my arm.”

 

Al stared, dumbfounded. “That can happen?”

 

“Apparently.”

 

“Are you okay, though? They got the splinters out?”

 

“Ye-es,” Honoria said, but she drew the word out so it sounded more like a question than an answer. Al frowned. “They got a lot of the actual splinters out, most of them, I think. But the bits closest to the core have sort of . . . I don’t know what the technical term is. I don’t know if there  _ is _ a technical term. Because of something that happened last night -- something that was part of Shearson’s spell, or the heat from the Fiendfyre, or something about the weird magic we cast -- something caused the magical bits of my wand to  _ fuse _ to my arm, somehow, and they  _ can’t _ be removed. But they’re still trying to function as a wand. I think. Like I said, no one is actually telling me anything, so this is all things I’ve read between the lines. But that’s quite a good opinion, really. Like I said, this is something of my area. I’m sorry -- I’m babbling.”

 

Al shook his head. “It’s fine,” he assured her. “So what does that mean for you?”

 

“At the moment, it means I’m  _ really _ good at wandless magic. I have to be careful when I gesture, that I don’t accidentally cast a spell. Long-term, though, who knows? I’ve had my view of what’s magically possible turned upside down a few times in the last 24 hours.”

 

“You’re telling me,” Al said, and they shared a smile before everything that they weren’t saying pressed in around them again. Al struggled with what to say. She looked so stricken sitting there, staring at her hands, and he didn’t know what she was thinking. 

 

She spoke before he could find words of his own.

 

“I want you to know I’m not holding you to anything you said or did last night.”

 

The sentence was quiet, understated, spoken to her knees. Al exhaled on a long, slow breath.

 

“You’re not,” was all he said, the words not quite a question. She shook her head.

 

“I think in life or death situations, people have a tendency to say or do things they otherwise might not,” she explained softly. “And it’s not fair to hold them to those things.”

 

“You think I didn’t mean them?” Al asked, his voice as quiet as hers. Her eyes flicked up to his for a heartbeat, then back down to her hands.

 

“I think you’re too compassionate to let another person go to their grave unabsolved.”

 

“And I think you are giving me way too much credit.”

 

That brought her head up, not just her eyes. He could tell from how still she was that she was holding her breath, waiting for him to explain, not letting herself hope. And he wanted to reassure her, he did, but at the same time he was battling frustration -- he’d ended things because she had assumed a selfishness that hadn’t been there. Now she was going too far in the opposite direction, and assuming a self _ less _ ness that had  _ not _ been driving his actions.

 

“Honoria,” he said, speaking plainly, “we stared death in the face, and my biggest regret was not giving us a second chance. Not having more time with you. Absolution didn’t come into it. It was a selfish gesture, and given that we didn’t die, I have no intention of taking back anything I said or did last night. I meant it all.”

 

Her gaze had returned to her hands. “But you wouldn’t be saying that to me today if we hadn’t stared death in the face last night.”

 

Al sighed and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “No,” he agreed. “But I think I would have been saying it eventually.”

 

He watched her carefully. The words took a second to sink in, but when they did, her head came up, her face shocked. He smiled the tiniest bit. “Last night was not a snap decision,” he said simply. “The truth is . . .” He trailed off and sighed. “The truth is that I, apparently . . . sabotage my romantic relationships. I wanted to argue it wasn’t true, but . . . I’ve forgiven friends for way worse than what you did, without a second thought.” It was hard to admit, but that was the conclusion he’d been forced to come to. Scorpius had lied to him about his post-school plans for two years, and about his betrothal to Honoria for seven years, and the whole thing with Rose . . . those things were worse than a relatively small bit of public humiliation. 

 

“What I did was wrong,” she said. He nodded. 

 

“Yes,” he agreed. “But the way I reacted to it was wrong, too. I was too harsh. I was looking for the reason we wouldn’t work. Like I always do.”

 

She took that in, and he waited, a bit anxiously, to see how she would respond. Eventually she said, “Well . . . you should stop doing that.”

 

He laughed, and she smiled, and something right clicked into place. “I agree,” he said. “And I think we deserve a second chance.”

 

“Me too,” she said, and he found he couldn’t contain his smile. “So . . .” she said after a llong moment in which they’d beamed at each other and not much else, “where do we go now?”

 

“Well,” he said, “you could come over here. For starters.”

 

“What about my Healer’s orders to stay in my wheelchair?”   
  


“I think I know where you can get a second opinion.”

 

With a grin, she climbed into the bed beside him. 

 

They talked about a lot of things that day. Curled together on the hospital bed, they shared mistakes and regrets, and hopes and plans for the future, and promises to be better, both of them, about holding each other accountable and making their relationship work. 

 

When Scorpius came to take Honoria back to her myriad of observations, he saw the two of them sitting together, deep in conversation, and made his own decisions. Four hours later, they were both being discharged, though with the expectation that they would be back the next day for tests and trials until the strange magic they’d worked could be explained and unraveled. 

 

They left together, standing at the entrance to Mungo’s, having made their way through the gaggle of reporters hoping desperately to get any of the juicy gossip they knew the Aurors were keeping from them. Al fended them off with a diplomatic “No comment” and “The Aurors are the real heroes,” while Honoria took a slightly more forceful approach with a firm, “Oi, my boyfriend Al Potter and I saved your lives last night. Can you please clear a path to the door? Thank you.”

 

Al shook his head as they emerged into Muggle London. “Too much?” Honoria asked.

 

“No,” Al said with a laugh. “I think you’re gonna handle them just fine.”

 

“So where shall we go?” she asked then, looking up and down the street. Al smiled down at her and linked her arm with his.

 

“Anywhere you want.” 

  
  



	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The intention was to finish and post this about four days after I finished the last chapter. No one's surprised that it took me seven months, right? I hope the wait was worth it. Thank you all for sticking around and enjoying my work. I am honestly sorry it takes me so long. 
> 
> BUT! *shamless plug* If you are interested in reading an *ORIGINAL* story that I co-wrote that is all already finished, and so is guaranteed to be posted in its entirety in a timely fashion, I encourage you all to head over to artofletterwriting.com to follow and participate in my interactive YA novel/webseries! *end shameless plug*

There was something about weddings.

 

“So tell us again, dear,” a woman across the table asked Honoria, pulling her focus back to the table and away from her boyfriend on the other side of the room. “How did you and Al meet?”

 

“At a wedding, actually,” she said with a smile, and provided the short and sweet and acquaintance-appropriate version for the group of some distant family members of Al’s. They oohed and aahed in all the right places, and when it was announced that the bride and groom were about to take the floor for their first official dance as husband and wife, they scurried away for a prime spot around the dance floor.

 

Honoria’s eyes found Al again, across the room, and she couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on her face. He looked good in those dress robes, that was for sure, and she had come to love watching him surrounded by his family, these extraordinary wizards and witches who had welcomed her as one of them with open arms. She was lucky, so lucky, to call herself connected to the Potters and the Weasleys. 

 

The music started, and Honoria slowly made her way along the dance floor. James and Sylvie were radiant as they danced together, as radiant as Rose and Scorpius had looked during their first dance. As radiant as Honoria hoped she and Al would look someday.

 

Not that they were anywhere close to that point. The gala and all that had happened there had been only six months ago, and Honoria knew Al was the kind of guy who would want to wait and be sure, and that was fine. They’d made it this far, and she was confident that they could go the distance. She could be patient. Being with Al had taught her patience, and she was so glad. 

 

So it was enough, at James and Sylvie’s wedding, to make her way slowly along the dance floor until she was behind him and say softly, “He never looked at me that way.”

 

Al raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. “My brother? I certainly hope not.”

 

Smiling, she came up to stand beside him and slipped her hand into his. For a moment, they watched the couple dancing, perfectly content, oblivious to the world around them. Honoria felt that way, too. Perfectly content. Happier than she’d ever been. 

 

After a moment, she spoke. “Nice speech, by the way.” Al smiled.”Couldn’t help but notice it wasn’t the one you spent this week practicing, though.” That made Al laugh.

 

“Which one?” he asked. “I think I wrote eight different versions.”

 

“And when did you write this one?” she asked with a grin.

 

“Mmm...about two hours ago.”

 

“Well, you should know that Scorpius and James are already arguing about whose was better.”

 

Al chuckled. “I’m not surprised in the least.”

 

“They’re also arguing over who gets to be  _ your _ best man when the time comes.”

 

He glanced at her again, an unreadable look in his eyes, but before she could decipher it, Al shook his head and rubbed at his neck, and the look was gone. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna let them fight that one out. Keeps me from having to make the decision.”

 

“Well, you know what you have to do, don’t you?” she asked as the dance ended and everyone applauded. 

 

“No, what do I have to do?” Al asked as he placed a hand at her waist and deftly led her out onto the dance floor with all the other couples.

 

“You have to find someone to marry who can claim one of them as their chief witness.” She said it lightly, but her heart was hammering. She hadn’t really hinted at this before, not too strongly, because she didn’t want it to seem like she was pushing too far too fast. But the opening was too perfect to waste. Al raised an eyebrow.

 

“And where might I find such a person?” he asked.

 

“Well, as it so happens,” she informed him, “it’s been my plan to ask Scorpius to be my chief witness since before I met you.”

 

Al tilted his head. “Really?” he asked, not teasing or flirting, but genuinely curious. She smiled, a little sheepish.

 

“Yeah,” she admitted, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve known him my whole life, and I’ve known him  _ well _ for five or six years now. He’s been there for some of the most important times I’ve gone through, and I just can’t think of anyone better suited to the role.”

 

“Hmm,” Al said, considering this. “But what is Saoirse going to say?” 

 

“Saoirse is an amazing work friend. But we don’t extend too far beyond that. Scorpius is easily my best friend. I refuse to choose someone I’m less close with just for the sake of fulfilling bizarrely gendered expectations.”

 

Al smiled at that, almost laughing. “So you’re throwing your hat in the ring?” he asked. “As a suitable marriage contender?”

 

“I’m only saying that it presents a solution to your current dilemma,” she said with a smile that she hoped didn’t betray her nerves. She wasn’t pushing too fast, was she?

 

“It does at that,” he said quietly, with a soft and unreadably smile, then he gently spun her out and under her arm. She twirled with a small laugh and returned to him, but something was off. Instead of replacing his hand at the small of her back, he had brought it up between them in a rather unnatural posture, and she gave him one confused look before glancing down.

 

The sight of the ring in his fingers brought her up short. She froze in the middle of the dance floor, her breath catching in her throat. She couldn’t think, couldn’t wrap her mind around what was happening. 

 

“Honoria,” he said in an undertone, with a gentle pressure on the hand he held, “I’m trying very hard not to draw attention to us. Could you please keep dancing?”

 

“What are you doing?” she breathed, even as she stepped seamlessly back into the dance. 

 

“I would have thought that was obvious,” he said, his eyes shining with confident amusement. “I’m proposing. Will you marry me?”

 

“Al,” she breathed, searching for words. “I . . . I wasn’t trying to push you into this.”

 

“I wasn’t pushed. Will you marry me?”

 

“Because I was just, I was teasing, I wasn’t trying to pressure you.”

 

“And I will assure you again; I don’t feel pressured. I want this. I want you. Will you marry me?”

 

“I--” Her eyes darted down again to the ring, that  _ gorgeous _ ring, as she tried to reorient herself within this moment, so unexpected but so longed for, so surreal but so . . . “Al, are you sure?” She asked because she couldn’t do this to them again. She asked because she wanted this  _ so _ badly, but she wanted him to want it just as much. She asked because this was so much sooner than she had ever expected Al to take this step. 

 

He wasn’t done confounding her expectations. She asked if he was sure, and he  _ laughed _ . “Honoria,” he said, and he didn’t seem hesitant or uncertain or nervous at all, “the last time I was this sure about something, I spent every day for a month in Madame Pomfrey’s office, pestering her into taking me on as a Healer’s apprentice. I am sure. I am more than sure. Are you  _ really _ going to make me as you a fourth time?”

 

She shook her head, blinking back the joyful tears that had sprung up. “No,” she assured him. Then the strangeness of the situation caught up with her, and she laughed in incredulity. “I can’t believe you’re proposing at your brother’s wedding,” she said. Al look a bit sheepish at that.

Yeah,” he said. “Not the best timing, but the moment was too good to pass up. Hopefully he won’t even notice.” And he held the ring up a little higher, the question clear in his eyes. For a moment, Honoria couldn’t speak. And before she could find her voice ---

 

“ _ Seriously _ ?” a loud voice rang out, cutting through the music and the murmuring of the dance floor. “You carry that ring around for two weeks, and then propose at my  _ wedding _ ? Not cool, dude.”

 

Al’s face scrunched up in consternation. “So much for that hope,” he muttered, and Honoria laughed. Turning to face a judgemental James and a laughing Sylvie, he called “Literally no one would have noticed if you hadn’t started shouting about it.”

 

“ _ I _ noticed.”

 

“You’ve been carrying a ring around for two weeks?” Honoria asked softly, pulling Al’s focus back to her. The consternation left his face, and he looked at her . . .  _ Merlin _ , the look he gave her took her breath away.

 

“I told you I was sure,” he said softly. “I was just waiting for the right moment.”

 

Honoria didn’t normally consider herself to be overly sentimental, but that confession had her blinking back tears. Before she could answer, however, James interrupted them again.

 

“Are you seriously  _ still _ proposing?”

 

“If I promise to make you best man, will that make it better?” Al asked over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving Honoria’s. James’s whole demeanor changed immediately.

 

“Why, yes,” he said. “Yes, it would.”

 

“Oi!” Scorpius exclaimed incredulously from the other side of the dance floor. Al took a deep breath through his nose, lifting his eyes momentarily upward. “This is what I wanted to avoid,” he muttered, for her ears only. “Sorry, Scorp, the lady claimed you,” he said, louder. “At least, she did in the abstract, but all this is a bit premature as I haven’t actually gotten an answer yet.”

 

After that pronouncement, Honoria had to stifle a laugh as James immediately backpedaled his teasing, sweeping the dance floor and urging the other guests to “move along, move along, nothing here to see, let’s not gawk and make this awkward.”

 

“If I refuse to verbalize my answer,” Honoria said softly, “do you think he’ll leave us alone forever?”

 

Al almost chuckled. “No chance. We’ve got two minutes. Tops.”

 

“Well, then,” she said. Meeting his eyes, they both knew there was nothing to truly needed to be said. There were tears of joy in her eyes, and nothing but confidence and love shining out of his. They both knew her answer. There had never been any doubt. “You know,” she said, “I’ve spent so much of my life fighting against the choice my parents made for me. This is the first time I’ve ever actually been grateful. Because if they hadn’t arranged my marriage to Scorpius . . . I wouldn’t be here saying yes to you.”

 

His smile at those words lit the whole room. He took her left hand and raised the ring to it, but he paused just past the first knuckle. “You are saying yes then?” he asked. With a laugh, she swatted him lightly on the arm, prompting a grin as he slid the ring all the way down her finger. 

 

Sometimes the events that alter the direction of your life are huge and monumental and obvious. And sometimes, you have a brief conversation with a stranger, and you have no idea that you will wake in the morning a different person than you were the day before. But as hard and confusing and challenging as their story had been, neither Al nor Honoria would change one detail of it for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Please consider leaving a review.

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued.  
> Please consider leaving a review.


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